America’s Deadly Dynamics With Iran
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT
COMMUTING to work in Tehran is never easy, but it is particularly nerve-racking these days for the scientists of Shahid Beheshti University. It was a little less than a year ago when one of them, Majid Shahriari, and his wife were stuck in traffic at 7:40 a.m. and a motorcycle pulled up alongside the car. There was a faint “click” as a magnet attached to the driver’s side door. The huge explosion came a few seconds later, killing him and injuring his wife.
On the other side of town, 20 minutes later, a nearly identical attack played out against Mr. Shahriari’s colleague Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist and longtime member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Perhaps because of his military training, Mr. Abbasi recognized what was happening, and pulled himself and his wife out the door just before his car turned into a fireball. Iran has charged that Israel was behind the attacks — and many outsiders believe the “sticky bombs” are the hallmarks of a Mossad hit.
Perhaps to make a point, Mr. Abbasi, now recovered from his injuries, has been made the director of Iran’s atomic energy program. He travels the world offering assurances that Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons is peaceful.
Even for the Iranian scientists who get to work safely, life isn’t a lot easier. A confidential study circulating through America’s national laboratories estimates that the Stuxnet computer worm — the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed against another country’s infrastructure — slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by one to two years. Now it has run its course. But there is no reason to believe the attacks are over.
(More here.)
NYT
COMMUTING to work in Tehran is never easy, but it is particularly nerve-racking these days for the scientists of Shahid Beheshti University. It was a little less than a year ago when one of them, Majid Shahriari, and his wife were stuck in traffic at 7:40 a.m. and a motorcycle pulled up alongside the car. There was a faint “click” as a magnet attached to the driver’s side door. The huge explosion came a few seconds later, killing him and injuring his wife.
On the other side of town, 20 minutes later, a nearly identical attack played out against Mr. Shahriari’s colleague Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist and longtime member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Perhaps because of his military training, Mr. Abbasi recognized what was happening, and pulled himself and his wife out the door just before his car turned into a fireball. Iran has charged that Israel was behind the attacks — and many outsiders believe the “sticky bombs” are the hallmarks of a Mossad hit.
Perhaps to make a point, Mr. Abbasi, now recovered from his injuries, has been made the director of Iran’s atomic energy program. He travels the world offering assurances that Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons is peaceful.
Even for the Iranian scientists who get to work safely, life isn’t a lot easier. A confidential study circulating through America’s national laboratories estimates that the Stuxnet computer worm — the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed against another country’s infrastructure — slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by one to two years. Now it has run its course. But there is no reason to believe the attacks are over.
(More here.)
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