Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered
Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012
Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza.
On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.
Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.
"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.
Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").
Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".
Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.
Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").
An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."
Should "secret panels" and "kill lists" be tolerated in a liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law? Did the founders of the United States intend for its president to be judge, jury and executioner? Whatever happened to checks and balances? Or due process?
Imagine the response of our politicians and pundits to a campaign of assassinations against western scientists conducted by, say, Iran or North Korea. When it comes to state-sponsored killings, the double standard is brazen. "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them," George Orwell observed, "and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side".
But how many more of our values will we shred in the name of security? Once we have allowed our governments to order the killing of fellow citizens, fellow human beings, in secret, without oversight or accountability, what other powers will we dare deny them?
This isn't complicated; there are no shades of grey here. Do we disapprove of car bombings and drive-by shootings, or not? Do we consistently condemn state-sponsored, extrajudicial killings as acts of pure terror, no matter where in the world, or on whose orders, they occur? Or do we shrug our shoulders, turn a blind eye and continue our descent into lawless barbarism?
What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?
Depends who you ask. The war mongers and those involved in the Arms Industry will be happy. The Iranian civillian population won't be.
Meanwhile some of us understand how the game is being played and won't forget the facts. The facts are the Israelis have never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty but Iran has, and has complied with its provisions. We shall continue to shake our head at the hypocrisy.
What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?
it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...
What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?
it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...
Thinking back, it seems like a president's approval rating skyrockets at the initial onset of a war.
I don't think the US would invade though. I don't even know if they would enter a war unless Iran targeted US in retaliation of an Israel airstrike. The goal is to stop Iran from have the capability to make nuclear weapons. I prefer the covert method versus an all-out war. Everyone in Iran working on the program understands the risk they are taking.
Thinking back, it seems like a president's approval rating skyrockets at the initial onset of a war.
I don't think the US would invade though. I don't even know if they would enter a war unless Iran targeted US in retaliation of an Israel airstrike. The goal is to stop Iran from have the capability to make nuclear weapons. I prefer the covert method versus an all-out war. Everyone in Iran working on the program understands the risk they are taking.
Thankfully, everyone else does not have nukes. I like a world where we are trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not increase them.
for sure but unless israel and the US get rid of their nukes - iran has no choice ... iran has been fucked with for the better part of half a century now ... they obviously have no choice but to obtain nukes ...
Thankfully, everyone else does not have nukes. I like a world where we are trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not increase them.
for sure but unless israel and the US get rid of their nukes - iran has no choice ... iran has been fucked with for the better part of half a century now ... they obviously have no choice but to obtain nukes ...
No choice other then nukes? What about Obama reaching out to them after he took office?
What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?
it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...
i have to disagree about israel not going to war without us approval. as long as netanyahu is in power israel will do whatever it wants.. the us has ordered israel to stop settlement expansion and instead they accellerated it. the us asked israel not to invade lebanon in 2006 but they attacked them anyway. it is well documented what bibi thinks of the us government, and has been quoted on several occasions as saying "the americans are easily manipulated" and that he knows that whatever israel ends up doing, the us will support them eventually..
there is going to be a war in iran.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
No choice other then nukes? What about Obama reaching out to them after he took office?
How will obtaining nukes un-fuck them?
iran is run by hard-line extremists now - because of foreign intervention ... they trust the US about as far as they can toss em ... their unwillingness at diplomacy is because they are hard liners ...
in their minds - all they see is constant intervening, covert ops, spying, etc ... they must feel like an attack is imminent ... so, they need to arm themselves ...
No choice other then nukes? What about Obama reaching out to them after he took office?
How will obtaining nukes un-fuck them?
iran is run by hard-line extremists now - because of foreign intervention ... they trust the US about as far as they can toss em ... their unwillingness at diplomacy is because they are hard liners ...
in their minds - all they see is constant intervening, covert ops, spying, etc ... they must feel like an attack is imminent ... so, they need to arm themselves ...
Arm themselves with nuclear weapons? Perhaps attack is imminent because they are developing nuclear capability. Would we even be having conversations about possible war if this program didn't exist?
If they ever decide to enrich uranium to weapon's grade, they are putting the lives of their citizens in imminent danger. They know what the response will be.
This situation outcome is in Iran's control. But as you noted, they are run by hard-liners ... and that is exactly why they cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered
Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012
Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza.
On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.
Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.
"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.
Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").
Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".
Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.
Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").
An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."
Should "secret panels" and "kill lists" be tolerated in a liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law? Did the founders of the United States intend for its president to be judge, jury and executioner? Whatever happened to checks and balances? Or due process?
Imagine the response of our politicians and pundits to a campaign of assassinations against western scientists conducted by, say, Iran or North Korea. When it comes to state-sponsored killings, the double standard is brazen. "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them," George Orwell observed, "and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side".
But how many more of our values will we shred in the name of security? Once we have allowed our governments to order the killing of fellow citizens, fellow human beings, in secret, without oversight or accountability, what other powers will we dare deny them?
This isn't complicated; there are no shades of grey here. Do we disapprove of car bombings and drive-by shootings, or not? Do we consistently condemn state-sponsored, extrajudicial killings as acts of pure terror, no matter where in the world, or on whose orders, they occur? Or do we shrug our shoulders, turn a blind eye and continue our descent into lawless barbarism?
Thanks for putting a face to this. I think some of us would like to picture him as some one dimensional bad guy in a action flick that deserved what he got. When in reality he's just another guy working for a paycheck to support his family.
Arm themselves with nuclear weapons? Perhaps attack is imminent because they are developing nuclear capability. Would we even be having conversations about possible war if this program didn't exist?
If they ever decide to enrich uranium to weapon's grade, they are putting the lives of their citizens in imminent danger. They know what the response will be.
This situation outcome is in Iran's control. But as you noted, they are run by hard-liners ... and that is exactly why they cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
Why in the heck do you even defend Iran?
yes ... we would ... look at iraq ... the west manufactured lies to go to war there ... notice this escalation in iran's nuclear program only after bush added it to the axis of evil and the propaganda in the west heated up ...
i'm not so much as defending iran as i am recognizing why iran is the way it is ... why don't you acknowledge that years of covert ops is the actual reason for the hard line gov't there? ...
It comes down to one thing
Would you be happy to have this type of thing in your own country
Would you be happy to have foreign nationals blowing up people in your own country
Most western nations would deem it a terrorist attack
It's wrong
Simple as that
Regardless if your for or against irans nuclear ambitions
...
If they ever decide to enrich uranium to weapon's grade, they are putting the lives of their citizens in imminent danger. They know what the response will be....
their citizens lives are only in imminent danger if another country decides to make it so. the response you speak of is the sole responsibility of the country who makes it their business to respond. do you think all countries with nuclear weapons are in imminent danger from within or without? if not then why make an exception for iran?
my concern for the iranian people runs more towards the fact that their legal code is based on sharia and that the guardian council has the veto power over all new legislation. but i guess thats just my godless heathenism coming through.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Santorum hopes the US is behind killing Iranian nuclear scientists:
That doesn't sound very "Christian" of him... :?
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Thankfully, everyone else does not have nukes. I like a world where we are trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not increase them.
for sure but unless israel and the US get rid of their nukes - iran has no choice ... iran has been fucked with for the better part of half a century now ... they obviously have no choice but to obtain nukes ...
Since when is escalation is a necessity? If anything, it only serves to instigate a war. This is another situation where both parties are fundamentally in the wrong and it's going to end badly for the little guy. How many Iranians will die because 'Iran has no choice'? I don't understand people taking sides on an issue like this when neither side is deserving of any respect.
Comments
What, you mean along with the fact that maybe a million or so people will be killed and another country ransacked and destroyed?
Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered
Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012
Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza.
On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.
Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.
"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.
Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").
Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".
Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.
Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").
An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."
Should "secret panels" and "kill lists" be tolerated in a liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law? Did the founders of the United States intend for its president to be judge, jury and executioner? Whatever happened to checks and balances? Or due process?
Imagine the response of our politicians and pundits to a campaign of assassinations against western scientists conducted by, say, Iran or North Korea. When it comes to state-sponsored killings, the double standard is brazen. "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them," George Orwell observed, "and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side".
But how many more of our values will we shred in the name of security? Once we have allowed our governments to order the killing of fellow citizens, fellow human beings, in secret, without oversight or accountability, what other powers will we dare deny them?
This isn't complicated; there are no shades of grey here. Do we disapprove of car bombings and drive-by shootings, or not? Do we consistently condemn state-sponsored, extrajudicial killings as acts of pure terror, no matter where in the world, or on whose orders, they occur? Or do we shrug our shoulders, turn a blind eye and continue our descent into lawless barbarism?
Meanwhile some of us understand how the game is being played and won't forget the facts. The facts are the Israelis have never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty but Iran has, and has complied with its provisions. We shall continue to shake our head at the hypocrisy.
yeah but its not our people and its not our country so...
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
word.
it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...
I don't think the US would invade though. I don't even know if they would enter a war unless Iran targeted US in retaliation of an Israel airstrike. The goal is to stop Iran from have the capability to make nuclear weapons. I prefer the covert method versus an all-out war. Everyone in Iran working on the program understands the risk they are taking.
why should everyone else have nukes and iran not?
for sure but unless israel and the US get rid of their nukes - iran has no choice ... iran has been fucked with for the better part of half a century now ... they obviously have no choice but to obtain nukes ...
How will obtaining nukes un-fuck them?
there is going to be a war in iran.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
iran is run by hard-line extremists now - because of foreign intervention ... they trust the US about as far as they can toss em ... their unwillingness at diplomacy is because they are hard liners ...
in their minds - all they see is constant intervening, covert ops, spying, etc ... they must feel like an attack is imminent ... so, they need to arm themselves ...
If they ever decide to enrich uranium to weapon's grade, they are putting the lives of their citizens in imminent danger. They know what the response will be.
This situation outcome is in Iran's control. But as you noted, they are run by hard-liners ... and that is exactly why they cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
Why in the heck do you even defend Iran?
Thanks for putting a face to this. I think some of us would like to picture him as some one dimensional bad guy in a action flick that deserved what he got. When in reality he's just another guy working for a paycheck to support his family.
yes ... we would ... look at iraq ... the west manufactured lies to go to war there ... notice this escalation in iran's nuclear program only after bush added it to the axis of evil and the propaganda in the west heated up ...
i'm not so much as defending iran as i am recognizing why iran is the way it is ... why don't you acknowledge that years of covert ops is the actual reason for the hard line gov't there? ...
Would you be happy to have this type of thing in your own country
Would you be happy to have foreign nationals blowing up people in your own country
Most western nations would deem it a terrorist attack
It's wrong
Simple as that
Regardless if your for or against irans nuclear ambitions
their citizens lives are only in imminent danger if another country decides to make it so. the response you speak of is the sole responsibility of the country who makes it their business to respond. do you think all countries with nuclear weapons are in imminent danger from within or without? if not then why make an exception for iran?
my concern for the iranian people runs more towards the fact that their legal code is based on sharia and that the guardian council has the veto power over all new legislation. but i guess thats just my godless heathenism coming through.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
That doesn't sound very "Christian" of him... :?
Since when is escalation is a necessity? If anything, it only serves to instigate a war. This is another situation where both parties are fundamentally in the wrong and it's going to end badly for the little guy. How many Iranians will die because 'Iran has no choice'? I don't understand people taking sides on an issue like this when neither side is deserving of any respect.