Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Raising death toll: the nuclear physicist victims

Today, another physicist is blasted up, by a magnetic car bomb.

This makes the number of science victims to 5. Here's a list, in chronological order.

  1. Wednesday 11 Jan 2012, car bomb kills Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, and the director for commecial affairs at the Natanz enrichment facility. According to Huffington post, yesterday, Israeli military chief Gen Benny Gantz was quoted saying to a parliamentry panel that "2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran – in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."
  2. 24 July 2011, biker assassins gunned down Dariush Rezai, 35, and injured his wife. Confusion remains whether the target of the killing was the 35 years old PhD candidate, or the 46 year old professor; Haaretz reports.
  3. Jan 12 2010, car bomb kills Masoud AliMohammadi, 50, A senior Physics professor; apparently an opponent of the government. Controversies over the Mossad link remain unresolved.
  4. 29 Nov 2010, car bomb kills Majid Shahriari (Accoridng to Huffington Post and NYT, this attack came a day after the release of internal U.S. State Department memos by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, including several that vividly detail Arab fears over Iran's nuclear program. A concurrent attempt on the life of Fereydoon Abbasi was unsuccessful.
  5. 15 Jan 2007, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, nuclear scientist dies from suspicious gas poisoning

I find it interesting that three of thse assassinations have happened in 15, 12 and 11th of January.

The latest attack (Jan 2012) comes five days after Iran officially announced intention to resume negotiations with the group of 6 over its nuclear program.

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