Iran: We’re not murderers, just incompetent

Gary Sick brings up a good point about the Iranian governments’s dubious claims that U.S. and Israeli agents are behind the recent assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist in Tehran yesterday. Even if this were true, wouldn’t that just make the security services look terrible at their jobs?  Stop and think for a moment about ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Gary Sick brings up a good point about the Iranian governments's dubious claims that U.S. and Israeli agents are behind the recent assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist in Tehran yesterday. Even if this were true, wouldn't that just make the security services look terrible at their jobs? 

Gary Sick brings up a good point about the Iranian governments’s dubious claims that U.S. and Israeli agents are behind the recent assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist in Tehran yesterday. Even if this were true, wouldn’t that just make the security services look terrible at their jobs? 

Stop and think for a moment about what the official Iranian announcement of the killing really means. It suggests that US and Israeli agents are able to penetrate not only Iran but residential areas in the capital city, Tehran. It indicates that they have access to powerful explosives and are able to target individuals almost at will, conduct a dramatic assassination, and then escape completely undetected.

What does that say about the Iranian security services? It is reminiscent of the earlier claim that US and Israeli agents were able to operate with weapons on Iranian streets and shoot Green protesters in order to create incidents that would embarrass the Islamic regime. If you believe these allegations, I have some prime real estate in the Florida swamps that you may find attractive. […]
But the fundamental question is the implication that outsiders can move about freely inside Iran today and carry out the most atrocious acts without ever being detected or brought to justice. Can the Iranian security services really be this bad? If so, why do they advertise it so widely?

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

Tag: Iran

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