

Nuclear scientist killed in Tehran was Iran's top Stuxnet expert  - makuro
http://www.debka.com/article/20406/

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radicaldreamer
Debka is thought to be an Israeli counterintelligence operation, so take its
writing with a grain of salt.

Of course, it's possible that the Israelis want everyone to know about their
capabilities (the line about the attacks coming 12 hours after the Wikileaks
cables release was interesting), but Debka's writing might not be extremely
accurate.

~~~
eliben
"Debka is thought to be an Israeli counterintelligence operation, so take its
writing with a grain of salt."

That's highly unlikely. Here in Israel, the original Debka File
(<http://www.debka.co.il/>) is considered a speculation site at best, a hoax
at worst. Most people consider it just a hangout of conspirators and
paranoids, and it's almost never treated seriously.

So don't read too much into it :)

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yuvadam
All sings hint at the fact that this is a classic Mossad operation. The MO of
a drive-by, close range, shooting or small explosive, is classic Mossad - and
has been used in the past.

That said, DEBKAfile is a dubious source of educated speculation - at best. It
is not considered a news source, and it does not operate by any standard. They
publish mere theories which are loosely backed by hard facts.

It does make a good read, though - I'll give them that.

~~~
Aloisius
That MO sounds familiar. I had no idea there were so many Mossad operations in
south central LA.

~~~
yuvadam
Levity aside - this MO is not common in the Middle East. This is not your
typical gang-war drive-by shooting.

~~~
ceejayoz
No one claimed it was. There are a lot more potential culprits than the
Mossad, though, and plenty of folks in the region who'd be quite happy to have
the Mossad blamed for something that benefits them (as the diplomatic cables
detailing the Arab nations' opinions on Iran have shown).

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Mrdev4
Reminds me of the Gerald Bull assassination, also thought to be carried out by
Mossad.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull>

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trotsky
Note that this was published right after the attacks, and the only source for
the claim that he was responsible for stuxnet cleanup was "Exclusive from
DEBKAfile's [unnamed] intelligence sources".

Many blogs republished the report (of course) but no other source has emerged,
and no paper of record has suggested it was true.

~~~
anigbrowl
Does anyone know of a decent tool to graph search results' external links?
There is so much content farming these days that I often wish for such a
thing.

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ErrantX
Wow. That is...a really terrible article.

Debka (IIRC) is probably akin to a cross between the Onion and Fox :)

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ScotterC
Interesting times when people are targeted because of their intelligence in a
given matter

~~~
daliusd
I think that was this way through all history:

* Main achitect of pyramid in Egypt was buried together in it(bad that I can't find link to that)

* Quite interesting story of Denis Papin (<http://radian.org/notebook/boatmen-and-cyberlaw>)

* Here is list in wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_scientists> (while not all of them were killed because of their work)

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Leptosiphon
I don't know how reliable a source "DEBKAfile" is, but just in general, it
makes me very uncomfortable that civilian scientists may possibly now be
considered legitimate targets for assassination or kidnapping by the US,
Israel or others.

~~~
natrius
If you're a scientist working on weapons systems (which is a debatable claim
in this instance), you're not a civilian.

~~~
Leptosiphon
According to Iran, scientists aren't working on a weapons system, they are
part of a civilian program to produce nuclear power plants. Following your
logic, the people who competed in the DARPA grand challenge are not civilians
and are legitimate targets for assassination by another world power.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
_> civilian program to produce nuclear power plants_

Desperately needed in a country with the world's third-largest oil reserves.

~~~
radicaldreamer
They have hardly any refining capacity to actually use those reserves.

There's no doubt though that they feel having nuclear weapons will be a
deterrent after how close they came to having their government wiped out by
Cheney et. al.

~~~
YooLi
They are trying to build _a_ bomb at this point. They are no where near the
point they can deter the US from meddling. One bomb, however, will deter those
with no bombs.

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eliben
I find it disappointing that this is on the main page of HN. Not really
relevant to why I'm coming to read this site.

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grav1tas
This is crazy if it's true. Is there any corroborating story from a (I hate to
put it this way) more mainstream/trusted source? I'm not sure about this
Debka. There's some spelling errors and I've never heard of them.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Debka is basically a Middle East rumor mill. Sometimes they're dead on the
money and sometimes they're wildly spinning pure fiction.

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sliverstorm
Considering this happened _after_ the leak, and such a short time after as
well, I can't help but wonder if someone read the leak and thought "that's a
great idea!"

~~~
alanh
Seven hours is precious little time, I would imagine, to plan for and put into
motion attacks like these.

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tomjen3
Damn Obama is stupid. The last thing the US needs now is another war in the
middle-east.

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tjarratt
Jump to conclusions much?

full disclosure: I am not a fan of wars in the middle east either.

