Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likes to think of himself as a pretty patient guy, but all these dead Iranian nuclear scientists are starting to give him a rash, United Nations Security Council. The scientists who've been killed before today? He's willing to float you those. But if one more gets killed -- just one more -- he's putting all your Security Council asses on trial.
On Monday, unknown assailants on motorcycles attached bombs to the cars of two Iranian nuclear scientists, Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi, killing Shahriari and wounding Abbasi. In the past, Iran has been content to point the finger at Israel for the mysterious ends that some of its nuclear scientists have met. But this is starting to get annoying, so now Ahmadinejad is taking his ire up to a higher geopolitical echelon.
"By God, if such an incident takes place one more time, we will bring each permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to trial," Ahmadinejad said today, referring to Shahriari's death.
Ahmadinejad didn't elaborate on how exactly he planned to bring the entire United Nations Security Council to trial in Iran or how trying Security Council fixture China -- Iran's most powerful economic and diplomatic protector -- would go over in Beijing. But he did explain why the U.N. Security Council is the responsible party in the killings. Sure, murder's a crime in Iran and Ahmadinejad could have waited for a credible, transparent investigation into the incident. But that's a formality. After all, those U.N. sanctions resolutions against Iran are practically a license to kill.
"We hold those who imposed the resolutions accountable for such crimes because in [one] resolution, they mentioned the names of our scientists as subject of the sanction," Ahmadinejad said, referring to a 2007 United Nations sanctions resolution in which Abbasi was listed as one of seven "persons involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities" whose assets and travel abroad were required to be restricted.
Of course. How else would foreign intelligence agencies or domestic dissident groups capable of covertly assassinating bodyguard-protected scientists know who to target if they weren't able to Google "U.N. sanctions resolutions"?
But Ahmadinejad is willing to let the U.N. slide on previous killings, deaths and disappearances of Iranian scientists. The 2007 murder of Ardashir Hosseinpour, an electromagnetics expert killed in his home by a mysterious "poison gas"? No charges for the United Nations. The January killing of University of Tehran physics professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi with a booby-trapped motorcycle equipped with a bomb? Still no trial. The kidnapping or defection -- depending on which YouTube video you believe -- of the nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri? He came back to Iran eventually, so: freebie.
But if one more scientist gets iced, then it's trial time for the world's most powerful nations. Ahmadinejad can probably recommend some good lawyers, too.
Photo: Daniella Zalcman
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