The recent killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh heading the Research Center of New Technology in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, when his car was ambushed in a district east of Tehran on November 27, has made headlines. Fakhrizadeh was considered a leading scientist of Iran’s nuclear program. According to Iran’s Defense Minister, Gen Amir Hatami, the scientist was targeted by gunfire and a Nissan vehicle explosion followed by a firefight.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has blamed Israel for the killing of the assassinated scientist and said it would not slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Rouhani has also said that Iran would avenge the killing of Mohsen at a time of its choosing; which signals no immediate retaliation. This is not the first time an Iranian scientist was targeted. Iran had similarly vowed retaliation to the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, Commander of Iran’s Quds Force in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020 outside Baghdad International Airport.  

Israel's role?

Israel has not responded to Rouhani’s accusation for assassinating Mohsen but US President Donald Trump re-tweeted Israeli journalist Yossi Melman  who wrote: "Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi assassinated in Damavand, east of Tehran according to reports in Iran. He was head of Iran's secret military program and was wanted for many years by Mossad. His death is a major psychological and professional blow for Iran."

Israel has been after Iran’s nuclear program for long. But if Israel  is indeed responsible for nuclear scientist’s killing, the timing of the attack  raises the question whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu timed it on behalf of Trump who refuses to accept fair play in the recent presidential elections amid speculation of Chinese interference and given that he has been wanting to bomb Iran.

The US has denied reports that its aircraft carrier USS Nimitz has moved to the Gulf. However, media reports confirm the US has moved B-52 bombers to cover Iran. Trump’s administration has said it is closely monitoring the situation. Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior advisor is headed to the Middle East for a trilateral US-Israel-Saudi Arabia meeting.

Killing of a leading nuclear scientist of Iran has led to speculation of possible conflict in the Middle East but retarding nuclear capability the dirty way has been happening in India also in the past. Global powers have been targeting the nuclear capability of other nations. 

Killing of Indian scientists

Killing Indian scientists began with the death of Homi J Bhabha, India’s foremost nuclear scientist, in an Air India plane crash on Mont Blanc in the French Alps during January 1966. Three months before the crash, Bhabha stated in a TV interview that India could make a nuclear bomb in 18 months if given the green signal. The plane carrying 41,000 tonnes of fuel should have exploded on impact, burning everything, which did not happen as per a Swiss climber who found limbs, documents and belongings of passengers among the wreckage.

The French inquiry concluded it was pilot error in not clearing the mountain. But in 2008, the book ‘Conversations with the Crow’ authored by Gregory Douglas carried his conversation with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Robert Crowley who said, “We had trouble, you know, with India back in the 60s when they got uppity and started work on an atomic bomb.” This indicated the CIA was possibly behind the plane crash in which Homi Bhabha was killed.

On December 8, 2015, India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) revealed that 11 Indian nuclear scientists had died in the period 2009-13 due to unnatural causes - blast, murder, alleged suicides or drowning at sea. These scientists and engineers were working in laboratories and research centers of the DAE like the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India.

The unusually high rate of unexplained deaths underwent routine police investigation despite Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in Bombay High Court by Right To Information (RTI) activist Chetan Kothari asking the government to constitute special investigation into these deaths. Kothari also claimed in the last 15 years BARC alone had reported 680 deaths. 

China-Pakistan nuclear axis

America deliberately ignored China transferring nuclear technology to Pakistan despite 1983 US intelligence report that China had transferred nuclear weapon design to Pakistan and weapons-grade uranium for two nuclear weapons; China co-opting Pakistani scientists in a nuclear test at its Lop Nor  site in 1989; China assisting Pakistan in uranium enrichment and supplying Pakistan with 5,000 specially designed ring magnets. The 1997 CIA report ‘The Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions’ confirmed China was the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan.

Yet no nuclear scientist has been targeted in Pakistan, not even Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb who indulged in blatant nuclear proliferation with obvious government support. He was not even questioned by the US intelligence and Washington swallowed then Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf’s lie that Khan was proliferating nuclear technology on his own accord.

According to Thomas Reed, former US Air Force Secretary, who authored the book ‘The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation,’ China under Deng Xiaoping decided to proliferate nuclear technology to communists and Muslims in the 'third world' based on the strategy that if the West started getting nuked by Muslim terrorists or another communist country without Chinese fingerprints, it would be good for China.

Geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows - the US and China in case of Pakistan’s nuclear program which continues to expand. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg’s recent statement “China is not our adversary” gives an impression he has forgiven China’s biologically bombing of NATO countries and the rest of the world from coronavirus, which originated from China. 

Incidentally, a NATO meeting in England during 2014 was reported to have secretly discussed how to keep the economies in check of not only China and Russia but also of India. The concept of one for all and all for one is hardly relevant to strategic partnerships.   

(The author is an Indian Army veteran. The views expressed are personal)