If Iran Is So Upset About That Nuclear Scientist Who Was Killed, They Should Recall That Arab Proverb...

Iran and its defenders have accused Israel as being behind the deaths of Iran's nuclear scientists. But, as the New York Times points out, Iran is in an odd position to be complaining about attacks on its nuclear scientists:

Neither Israeli nor American officials will discuss the covert campaign in any detail, leaving some uncertainty about the perpetrators and their purpose. For instance, Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believed that at least some of the murdered scientists might have been killed by the Iranian government. Some of them had shown sympathy for the Iranian opposition, he said, and not all appeared to have been high-ranking experts.


...A former senior Israeli security official, who would speak of the covert campaign only in general terms and on the condition of anonymity, said the uncertainty about who was responsible was useful. “It’s not enough to guess,” he said. “You can’t prove it, so you can’t retaliate. When it’s very, very clear who’s behind an attack, the world behaves differently.”

The former Israeli official noted that Iran carried out many assassinations of enemies, mostly Iranian opposition figures, during the 1980s and 1990s, and had been recently accused of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington.

“In Arabic, there’s a proverb: If you are shooting, don’t complain about being shot,” he said.

Just sayin'.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Iran.