There was a mystery explosion this weekend at an Iranian missile base in Bidganeh, near the city of Karaj about 25 miles to the west of Teheran, the Iranian capital.
Apparently there was an initial explosion - known in tradecraft as a 'trigger'- followed by a much larger one, so the Iranian reports of an 'accident in transferring ammunition' are about as truthful as almost everything else that comes from the regime.
The base housed a number of Iran's Shahab-3 missiles which reputedly have th erange to hit Israel. According to the recent IAEA report, Iran has experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device.
The base was devastated and at least 17 people, 8 of them members of the Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guards) were reported killed,with a number of others in critical condition.
Among the dead was Major General Hassan Moqqadam, who was in charge of Iran's missile program and a key figure in dispersing and strengthening Iran's nuclear facilities. His removal will almost certainly have a major slowing effect in those areas.
Needless to say,Israel's Mossad quickly became the prime suspect. The Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth ran an article yesterday called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps" that showed a number of interesting occurrences including several explosions at missile bases and related facilities, as well as the assassinations of three key Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program.
In the US, TIME Magazine's anti-Israel writer Karl Vick claimed that a US official had told him the Mossad was behind the blast.(via memeorandum):
"Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.
The Mossad regularly keeps mum on the operations it performs, and has had no comment about the allegations.
However, speaking of bullets, a new computer worm has surfaced in Iran's nuclear facilities, a variant of Stuxnet called 'Duqu'. Duqu reportedly is designed to gain remote access capabilities to allow future cyber attacks and make them harder to combat.
Someone doesn't like the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons.
As to the latest explosion - and actually, several other incidents - I'm fully prepared to say that this was merely a fortuitous work accident. However,based on some knowledge I happen to have, I'd like to draw my readers attention to a couple of seemingly unrelated items.
The first is the existence of an Iranian dissident group known as the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK). They're an interesting mix of leftists/liberals who embrace certain Islamist principles and originally supported the democratic, reformist Islamic Freedom Movement of Iran, headed by Mehdi Bazargan. When the Ayatollah Khomeini co-opted the Iranian revolution, pushed Bazargan out and turned Iran into a theocratic fascist state run on the principles of the villayat e-fiqh (rule of Islamic judges), they turned against the regime. Their leaders were subsequently executed and the group went underground where it became one of the chief opposition groups to the Iranian regime. Both the EU and US have designated MEK a terrorist group, since they've had no problem in the past using violence as part of their resistance activities.
The second is an old Middle East proverb you may have heard: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'
Selah.
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