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How far did Israeli killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists set back its program?
[IsraelTimes] Israeli diplomat says it will be ‘almost’ impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived; others are less optimistic

Israel’s tally of the war damage it wrought on Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
includes the assassinations of at least 14 scientists, an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran’s nuclear program that outside experts say can only set it back, not stop it.

In an interview with The News Agency that Dare Not be Named, Israel’s ambassador to La Belle France said the killings will make it "almost" impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM!...
s and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by US stealth bombers.

"The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years," Ambassador Joshua Zarka said.

But nuclear analysts say Iran has other scientists who can take their place. European governments say that military force alone cannot eradicate Iran’s nuclear know-how, which is why they want a negotiated solution to put concerns about the Iranian program to rest.

"Strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon," UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy told politicians in the House of Commons.

Here’s a closer look at the killings:

CHEMISTS, PHYSICISTS, ENGINEERS AMONG THOSE KILLED
Zarka told AP that Israeli strikes killed at least 14 physicists and nuclear engineers, top Iranian scientific leaders who "basically had everything in their mind."

They were killed "not because of the fact that they knew physics, but because of the fight that they were personally involved in, the creation and the fabrication and the production of [a] nuclear weapon," he said.

Nine of them were killed in Israel’s opening wave of attacks on June 13, the Israeli military said. It said they "possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons" and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists.

Zarka spoke Monday to AP. On Tuesday, Iran’s state TV reported the death of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, in an Israeli strike, after he’d survived an earlier attack that killed his 17-year-old son on June 13. The US State Department described Sedighi Saber, who was killed at his father-in-law’s residence, as the head of a group that works on explosives-related projects, adding that he was "linked to projects including research and testing applicable to the development of nuclear bombs."

TARGETED KILLINGS MEANT TO DISCOURAGE WOULD-BE SUCCESSORS
Experts say that decades of Iranian work on nuclear energy — and, Western powers allege, nuclear weapons — has given the country reserves of know-how and scientists who could continue any work toward building warheads to fit on Iran’s ballistic missiles.

"Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of PhD students will be able to figure it out," said Mark Fitzpatrick, who specialized in nuclear non-proliferation as a former US diplomat. Bombing nuclear facilities "or killing the people will set it back some period of time. Doing both will set it back further, but it will be reconstituted."

Fitzpatrick, now an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank, added, "They have substitutes in maybe the next league down, and they’re not as highly qualified, but they will get the job done eventually."

How quickly nuclear work could resume will, in part, depend on whether Israeli and US strikes destroyed Iran’s stock of enriched uranium and equipment needed to make it sufficiently potent for possible weapons use.

"The key element is the material. So once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known," said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Killing scientists may have been intended "to scare people so they don’t go work on these programs," he said.

"Then the questions are, ’Where do you stop?’ I mean you start killing, like, students who study physics?" he asked. "This is a very slippery slope."

The Israeli ambassador said, "I do think that people who will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it."

PREVIOUS ATTACKS ON SCIENTISTS
Israel has long been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists, but previously didn’t claim responsibility as it did this time.

In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for killing its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun.

"It delayed the program but they still have a program. So it doesn’t work," said Gay Paree-based analyst Lova Rinel, with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. "It’s more symbolic than strategic."

Without saying that Israel killed Fakhrizadeh, the Israeli ambassador said, "Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago" were it not for repeated setbacks to its nuclear program — some of which Iran attributed to Israeli sabotage.

"They have not reached the bomb yet," Zarka said. "Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program."

A LEGALLY GRAY AREA
International humanitarian law bans the intentional killing of civilians and non-combatants. But legal scholars say those restrictions might not apply to nuclear scientists if they were part of the Iranian armed forces or directly participating in hostilities.

"My own take: These scientists were working for a rogue regime that has consistently called for the elimination of Israel, helping it to develop weapons that will allow that threat to take place. As such, they are legitimate targets," said Steven R. David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.

He said Nazi German and Japanese leaders who fought Allied nations during World War II "would not have hesitated to kill the scientists working on the Manhattan Project" that fathered the world’s first atomic weapons.

Laurie Blank, a specialist in humanitarian law at Emory Law School, said it’s too early to say whether Israel’s decapitation campaign was legal.

"As external observers, we don’t have all the relevant facts about the nature of the scientists’ role and activities or the intelligence that Israel has," she said by email to AP. "As a result, it is not possible to make any definitive conclusions."

Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel.

"It’s one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what uranium is," he said.

But turning uranium into warheads that fit onto missiles is "not that simple," he said. "These people had the know-how of doing it, and were developing the know-how of doing it further. And this is why they were eliminated."
Posted by: trailing wife 2025-06-25
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