Don’t know. Goes to my larger point though that there are plenty of suspects. They exist domestically, regionally and globally.

The motive for a domestic assassin? Well how’s this for a start. The government has repressed, rather violently, opposition forces, including those that challenged a national election result. The demonstrations were large and well organized (from an outsider’s perspective). It’s not difficult to imagine that opposition politicians might consider Iran’s bellicose attitude towards outsiders, especially on matters of nuclear power, to be counterproductive. Even if they supported the nuclear program in principle.

Therefore to a domestic opposition force, the nuclear program as it stands might become the very symbol of the government they oppose.

I’m speculating here, but it seems to me that there’s an entirely plausible reason for the internal opposition to want to stop or redirect the nuclear program.

Similarly plausible motives exist for regional players, major powers, and so forth. Again, it’s like Agatha Christie. Perhaps “The Mousetrap”?

However this could all be a bit paranoid. There seems to be a credible internal opposition in Iran; it’s not inconceivable that there are some extremists among that group. Also, it’s not like this area of the world doesn’t have plenty of tensions and animosities at the national level. You don’t only need to look at the major powers to find people who have motives to commit such an act.

In fact that might be part of the problem. It’s like an Agatha Christie story; everyone has a plausible motive to commit murder. The butler, the friendly neighbor, the dissolute son, the angry daughter, the spurned spouse, on and on it goes!

“In any case, the scientists in this arena are merely things; such as an oil refinery or a weapons depot, anything that gives advantage to the enemy. And as such they are regular and certainly legitimate targets” (Gregg)… “the scientist are being treated the same as military personal…” (Fish)

Perhaps what is needed here (and was missing from the initial post) is clarification that scientists who have a hand in developing “weapons-based technology” are often much further removed from the military than many people realize, and may not even foresee that their work may be used to destructive ends. A previously assassinated Iranian physicist, Masoud Alimohammadi, was a theoretical particle physicist, whose work had no impact on nuclear technology. Was he killed because he is educating the next generation of nuclear scientists? Will covert attacks on leading scientists lead to an escalating cycle of tit for tat in which leading scientists of the US, Israel, or whoever else gets the blame are also killed?

For how much causal distance from lethal technologies does moral culpability stretch? Are universities and research parks the factories and fuel depot targets of upcoming engagements? The trajectory here is worrisome.

Well, actually no, but thanks for playing Nihilist For The Pay !!!

cf. Rachel Carson.

In the instance with Iran, the scientist are being treated the same as military personal. They are only separated by their high education and job role, but still serve to make the country a better military power. As such they are military targets, what is so hard to grasp about that?

Finally, grouping all scientist together is like grouping all factory workers together and saying they are all the same people polluting our world. Lets not forget just because someone invents a process, does not mean they have polluted anything. It takes a business man to fund it, workers to build it and operate it, and most importantly customers to by the products. Why single out only the scientist when all of them play a roll? Back to Iran, the scientist is the most vulnerable link, so naturally they will attack it.

Without us, they’d still be hunter-gatherers. Have they figured that out?

On the most simple level, the author projects western cultural values (in this case anxiety biased inductions) onto unknown assailants with unknown motives, who likely have no cultural identification with those the author invokes.

The yet to be ruled out possibility of domestic Iranian intrigue further weakens the author’s thesis.

I don’t think the targeted attacks of assassins are very equivalent to a mob mentality of people picking up their torches and pitch forks.

Science may not be completely blameless in our modern technological environmental catastrophes, but thinking it is solely responsible is quite naive.

Greed and population size would seem to me, to be much more likely the main culprits.

You get it wrong right from the start; “Regardless of what we may think of Iran having the bomb, the strategy of killing scientists and engineers of a country’s technological infrastructure is one that should give us pause.” The problem is that you discount(“regardless of…) the main dilemma(potential nuclear war) and exchange it with the rather trivial question of scientists being killed. The fact of the matter is that nuclear physics is still rather complicated(I’m told), so countries who want to acquire this weapon need talented scientists to facilitate this transition. That is all. Nuclear weapons are the ends, the scientists are the means. If kangaroos were the means then whoever killed the scientist(s) would have butchered all of Australia’s loveable marsupials.

Parallels drawn to the cultural revolution, Pol Pot and other dictatorial mass genocide of academia and intelligenista; are principally and practically unfounded mostly because scientists of the practical nature(engineers) were highly valued. Only the poets and philosophers in most cases were targeted for “reeducation”.

In any case, the scientists in this arena are merely things; such as an oil refinery or a weapons depot, anything that gives advantage to the enemy. And as such they are regular and certainly legitimate targets.