quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Obama's little CIA Bitch, Brennan is crying foul calling the assassination criminal and highly reckless.

LOL. Yeah, I'm sure he is. This is the Israelis working overtime to make sure that the Iranians will so mistrust the west that they'll never agree to another nuclear deal.

Where was Bruce Willis that day?

Maybe Walter didn't really die...

quote:

Originally posted by rburg:Also makes me think we don't know the whole story or details.

An article from The Wall Street Journal with more information.

Assuming the article is correct, what I thought interesting was that there was evidently a fair amount of chance in the fact that the guy was killed. The article says he got out of his “bullet proof” (according to other information) car and then (according to something else I read) was struck by only one bullet. If he’d stayed in the car, the driver had taken evasive action, or he just hadn’t been unlucky enough for the one bullet to hit him, things might have been much different. A remote controlled machine gun would have been pretty technically sophisticated, but certainly not as certain, IMO, as other methods that have been successful in the past.

==============================================

Remote Operation Killed Iran Scientist

Tehran blames Israel for what it called a new method of attack against nuclear official

By Sune Engel Rasmussen and Aresu Eqbali

The Iranian nuclear scientist killed last week was ambushed in a remotely controlled operation, the country’s top security official said, describing an audacious attack Tehran has blamed on Israel.

“The enemy used a completely new method, style and professional and specialized way to succeed in reaching its goal,” said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, at the funeral procession for the scientist on Monday. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied its involvement.

“The assassination in Iran, whoever did it, it serves not only Israel, but the whole region and the world,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told Kan public radio.

The scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was traveling with his wife on Friday, the Iranian weekend, from the tranquil northern town of Rostamkola to Absard, a small town with cool weather and luxurious villas east of Tehran that is a popular vacation spot for the capital’s elite.

Entering Absard, the scientist’s four-car convoy took a Uturn on the highway around 2:30 p.m., and continued toward town. The convoy came under fire from a machine gun mounted on a Nissan pickup truck, which sprayed Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s car with bullets, leaving him wounded in the side and the back, with his spine severed, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported, adding that the pickup truck then exploded.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh was transported first to a local medical clinic, then by helicopter to a military hospital in Tehran, where he died.

The death of the scientist, who is regarded as the father of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program in the 1990s and 2000s, adds to a spate of strikes in the past year against highly guarded Iranian security and nuclear personnel and facilities. Iran’s most prominent military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in January after he disembarked from a plane at Baghdad’s airport, drawing reprisal strikes from Tehran on an Iraqi base with U.S. military personnel. Nobody was killed at the base, but tensions with the U.S. soared over the attacks.

In July, an explosion ripped through Iran’s main nuclear facility, Natanz, destroying a centrifuge-assembly hall.

Iran also accuses Israel of killing four nuclear scientists in Tehran between 2010 and 2012, accusations Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied.

Iran hasn’t presented evidence that Israel was behind Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s killing. American and regional officials have said they suspect Israel was responsible.

Iranian security forces are holding up Mr. Fakhrizadeh and Gen. Soleimani as national heroes. Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s casket arrived on Monday for a funeral procession in the holy city of Mashhad before returning to Tehran for burial. A similar procession was held in Mashhad in January for Gen. Soleimani.

Some details about how Mr. Fakhrizadeh was killed remain murky, and access to foreign media is largely restricted in the Islamic Republic. Iranian state outlets and journalists have published contradictory information, including accounts that describe the attack beginning with an explosion that hit one of the cars, after which up to 12 gunmen leapt from motorcycles and a parked sport-utility vehicle and opened fire. It wasn’t clear how the killers escaped unharmed.

Mr. Shamkhani said that no perpetrators were present at the site and that the machine gun was controlled by electronic equipment.

The episode suggests that the perpetrators were able to gain detailed knowledge about the scientist’s movements.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh, who built up Iran’s nuclear program in the 1990s before it was dis- banded in the early 2000s, was the highest-profile scientist targeted yet, often compared with Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who oversaw the U.S.’s efforts to build an atomic bomb in the 1940s. Mr. Fakhrizadeh, a well-connected operator, was presumed to be the official most capable of helping Iran shift from a civilian nuclear program to bomb-making, if it chose to do so.

His name first became widely known to the public in April 2018 after an Israeli raid months earlier where agents covertly extracted a trove of documents detailing Iran’s nuclear program in an operation in Tehran. Mr. Netanyahu said the documents proved Mr. Fakhrizadeh was the chief architect behind a secret Iranian mission to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran says its enrichment program is for civilian purposes. The U.N.’s nuclear agency hasn’t found evidence that Iran currently has a nuclear weapons program.

Amos Yadlin, a former director of Israeli military intelligence, said those who planned the operation aimed to make it difficult for the incoming Biden team to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. While the timing of the attack could partially be explained by operational considerations, those behind the attack have had other opportunities to target Mr. Fakhrizadeh, he said.

“They didn’t look only to Tehran, they looked to Washington as well,” Mr. Yadlin said.

Mr. Netanyahu said in a Twitter video for his political supporters posted on the day of the killing that he “can’t tell you everything” about what he had achieved on the job over the past week.

—Felicia Schwartz in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.
=======================================

In addition to the text of the article, there was additional information in an accompanying graphic:

“2. Convoy is fired upon by a machine gun in a Nissan pickup truck about 500 feet ahead of them [the convoy] on the road.”
“3. Fakhrizadeh gets out of the car because he doesn’t realize the sounds are gunfire.”
“4. Fakhrizadeh is shot. His bodyguard jumps on top of him and is shot four times.”
“5. Nissan pickup truck explodes.”

LINK

quote:

“The enemy used a completely new method, style and professional and specialized way to succeed in reaching its goal,” said Ali Shamkhani,

I call that progress! Professional! Specialized! Successful!

quote:

Originally posted by Russ59:

quote:

“The enemy used a completely new method, style and professional and specialized way to succeed in reaching its goal,” said Ali Shamkhani,

I call that progress! Professional! Specialized! Successful!

Heck yeah! Somebody's getting an award for this.

“2. Convoy is fired upon by a machine gun in a Nissan pickup truck about 500 feet ahead of them [the convoy] on the road.”
“3. Fakhrizadeh gets out of the car because he doesn’t realize the sounds are gunfire.”
“4. Fakhrizadeh is shot. His bodyguard jumps on top of him and is shot four times.”
“5. Nissan pickup truck explodes.”

Cool!

For anyone interested in the history of Israel’s covert targeted killing operations over the years rather than just hagiography, I recommend the book Rise and Kill First by the Israeli author Ronen Bergman. I’ve read others that were also good, but that one contains an unusual wealth of detail. The members of the various Israeli organizations that have carried out those operations may indeed be able to walk on water as many believe, but they don’t always do it without getting their feet wet.

The second and third order effects, may be a boon for us in the long-term.

5 takeaways from Israel's assassination of Iran's top nuclear weapons scientist

TL;DR
1) Biden will not be able to return America to the JCPOA nuclear accord without significant complication
2) There was likely some U.S. intelligence support for this operation
3) Israel's covert intelligence presence on Iranian soil is growing
4) The attack will fuel Iran's paranoia and provoke retaliation
5) This attack doesn't portend U.S. or Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear facilities

Biden selecting Antony Blinkin to be his presumptive SecState, was to precisely reinvigorate the JCPOA (he was the author)...this attack throws a wrench into that idea.

I think it's safe to say, that internally, they're a mess, and its only a matter of time before the mullah's and the entire structure that supports them, collapses because of their own incompetence, corruption and ideology.

Iran Can’t Get Its Story Straight On Assassination of Top Nuclear Scientist

quote:

In the aftermath of the brazen assassination of Iran’s top nuclear official and military officer, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iranian officials and media outlets have offered up multiple conflicting, and often bizarre, accounts of how he died, even as Tehran scrambles to respond to the massive security breach.

The killing of Fakhrizadeh—probably by Israel, which has taken out numerous Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two decades—took place on a road outside of Absard, a mountain escape for Tehran’s elite where the scientist had an abode. According to all accounts, as his convoy neared an abandoned Nissan pickup truck, Fakhrizadeh’s convoy came under fire. The nuclear expert did not survive the attack.

....

I’m not convinced that the truck gun wasn’t a diversionary device and an actual sniper made the kill. If the remote machine gun was accurate enough to hit both the target and bodyguard 5 times at that range, I would think there would have been a large number of near misses that would totally shred the vehicle. But a loud, messy blasting away with a machine gun would be the perfect cover for several well placed shots from a nearby sniper in a good hide. Then blow the vehicle and slip away in the confusion.

In any case, it’s doubtful the Israelis will be discussing the matter if they were in fact involved.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
I’m not convinced that the truck gun wasn’t a diversionary device and an actual sniper made the kill.

Thanks for that thought. It would make far more sense than what is claimed to have happened, especially if it was indeed an Israeli operation. I’ve been puzzled by it since I first heard of the incident.

What I still find incomprehensible, though, is why the driver of a vehicle like that who had more than five minutes of bodyguard training would just stop upon hearing gunshots, but the fact that the principal would then decide to get out of an armored vehicle to see what was going on in the middle of shooting is just bizarre. Did he think they were driving into a wedding celebration or the like and thought he’d get out to offer his congratulations and have some goat on a stick?

I think that Iran's explanation that the principal got out of the vehicle is very suspect. More likely the car was heavily shot up with AP or explosive rounds, and Iran did not want to admit that their protection of the nuclear scientist was insufficient to stop an Israeli attack.

This might be so up and coming Iran scientists do not realize their occupation has life shortening hazards.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

hagiography

I learned a new word today.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
More likely the car was heavily shot up with AP or explosive rounds, and Iran did not want to admit that their protection of the nuclear scientist was insufficient to stop an Israeli attack.

That's a reasonable thought, too.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
I learned a new word today.

I've got a million of 'em.

Could have been something like a Kongsberg Remote Weapon System. I've worked with these in the past and their capabilities are very impressive.

https://www.kongsberg.com/kda/...tems/protector-rws/#

Apart from the rear right quarter light being shot out, there appears to be little more than a very neat cluster of bullet holes through the windshield. Are you guys talking about a totally shot-up vehicle using explosive rounds looking at something else that I can't see?

Tac is right, I went back and looked at the photos. Car looks pretty good, and there is a big splatter of blood and tissue 6' from the car. Perhaps the remote controlled gun caused the traffic slowdown, and a sniper at a different location shot the nuc. engineer when he got out of the car.

Report in The Jewish Chronicle from 13 February 2021 with details about the operation that I hadn’t seen before.

Too long to paste, but the article claims:
It was a remotely controlled gun that fired 13 shots that killed the scientist. The weapon was purpose-built and smuggled in pieces into the country.
No one other than he was injured.
The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad conducted the operation, and the US was not involved.
The analysis claims that the operation likely set back the Iranian nuclear weapons program several years.

LINK

A worthwhile video interview of the author of the report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRVAIEdG6kw