On 12 November a blast ripped through the Alghadir missile base, 25 miles south-west of Tehran. Among the 17 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard killed was Brigadier General Hassan Moghaddam, the architect of the country’s missile programme. Tehran said the explosion was an accident, but it came just days after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had tested the fitting of a nuclear warhead onto its most advanced ballistic missile, the Shahab-3. Three Iranian scientists have been assassinated in the past two years, reputedly by Mossad, and there was suspicion that the blast was the latest strike in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear programme. Western intelligence sources say more assassinations are likely to follow.

LRB 1 December 2011 | PDF Download