Double Hit

In the words of the old Buffalo Springfield song, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." The man put in charge of cleaning the Stuxnet worm out of Iranian computers has been assassinated in Tehran:

Prof. Majid Shahriari, who died when his car was attacked in North Tehran Monday, Nov. 29, headed the team Iran established for combating the Stuxnet virus rampaging through its nuclear and military networks. His wife was injured. The scientist's death deals a major blow to Iran's herculean efforts to purge its nuclear and military control systems of the destructive worm since it went on the offensive six months ago.

Only this month, Stuxnet shut down nuclear enrichment at Natanz for six days from Nov. 16-22 and curtailed an important air defense exercise. Prof. Shahriari was the Iranian nuclear program's top expert on computer codes and cyber war.

Another Iranian nuclear scientist, Prof. Feredoun Abbassi-Davani, and his wife survived a second coordinated attack with serious injuries. He is Dean of Students at the Beheshit Basijj Forces University, a key political appointment.

The Iranians are blaming the U.S. and Israel, of course, but as the Wikileaks documents have revealed, the Iranians have lots of enemies in the Middle East who want to see their nuclear program stopped. The Saudis, we learned from Wikileaks, have urged the United States to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran. It wouldn't be surprising were they behind this double hit, but who knows?