By BRUNO BEAKLINI*

There are a large number of physicists, engineers and chemists from Arab countries murdered under suspicious circumstances

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was the main Iranian nuclear scientist, at least as known by the security and intelligence agencies of the western imperialist countries, and he was martyred on November 27, 2020. Until the moment of conclusion of this article, no State has claimed responsibility for the attack and, if it did, it would be the acknowledgment of an international crime, an authentic declaration of war on Iran and its allies in the Greater Middle East.

“Coincidentally”, the non-reelected US president, Republican Donald Trump, announced some scale of aggression against Tehran, still at the end of his term. As if the 5th Fleet stationed in Bahrain was not enough, with the threat to the Strait of Hormuz (which could lead the planet to yet another oil crisis), the US Empire made public the presence of a B52 bombing escorted by at least six fighter jets, as an act of ostensive presence.

Before the murder and martyrdom of Dr. Fakhrizadeh, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference on April 30, 2018 in Tel Aviv: “Remember this name”. On the projector, a photo of the youngest scientist, perhaps the only record that the Mossad or cooperation with US agencies had so far obtained. Soon after the attack, more information about the victim began to circulate. Fakhrizadeh would have been born in 1958, in the holy Shiite city of Qom, he was deputy minister of defense and brigadier general of the Revolutionary Guards, earned a doctorate in nuclear engineering and taught at Imam Hussein University, in Iran.

The Doctor. Mohsen was not the first target of this type of terrorist action. Between 2010 and 2012, five Iranian scientists, all from the nuclear energy development program, were targets of attacks. Dariush Rezaeinejad was also murdered by the same method on July 23, 2011. On January 11, 2012, then young teacher Mostafa Ahmadi Roshane and his driver were martyred. The 2012 attack was in the same period as the second anniversary of the martyrdom of Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who was also assassinated in a terrorist bomb attack in Tehran, in January of 2010.

Also in 2010 there was another attack, targeting Fereidoun Abbassi Davani – who became director of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization – and his colleague Majid Shahriari Davani survived, but Shahriari died, being martyred. The modus operandi of all these attacks is practically the same, and that of 2020 was even more sophisticated. The total operation could have included 62 people on Iranian soil at all times of the crime. In addition to the explosion of a car bomb, the shots that fatally wounded Fakhrizadeh, also hitting his armored personnel carrier and escort, would have been fired from an electronic signal-triggered combat machine gun.

If we were to list the number of physicists, engineers and chemists from Arab countries murdered under the most suspicious circumstances, these scientific martyrs would be added to the Persian martyrs and a group of researchers from Islamic countries. We can exemplify with the martyrdom of the Tunisian aerospace engineer Mohammed al-Zawari, after be assassinated by the Mossad in December 2016, in the city of Sfaz, southeastern Tunisia. In April 2018, Palestinian engineer Fadial-Batsh was murdered in Malaysia, also by the Israeli spy agency. In August 2018, Syrian engineer and physicist Aziz Asbar was murdered and until the New York Times pointed Israel as the author of the crime.

If we go back even further in time, the list is huge: Samir Naguib (Egyptian, 1967), Yahyaal-Mashad (Egyptian, 1980), Rammal Hassan Rammal (Lebanese), GamalHemdan (Egyptian, 1993), Ibrahim al-Dhaheri (Iraqi , 2004). As demonstrated, the number of scientists martyred to the being assassinated by the Mossad it's big.

Another crime allegedly committed by Israel in conjunction with the US was the murder of Lieutenant Colonel of the Brazilian Air Force, José Alberto Albano do Amarante, in August 1981. Amarante was also an engineer graduated from the Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica. (ITA) and responsible for the development of the Brazilian nuclear program, at the time in partnership with Iraq. The pattern here would be even more sophisticated, with the engineer suffering from leukemia resulting from poisoning. The worthless of the Brazilian military dictatorship identified the Mossad agent Samuel Gilliad but, “mysteriously”, the spy from Tel Aviv managed to flee the country. A strange “coincidence” occurs in the fact that the state of São Paulo, where Amarante lived (in the city of São José dos Campos), was governed at the time by Paulo Salim Maluf, a Brazilian of Lebanese origin (from a Melkite family) and sadly known in the colony for supporting the Lebanese Forces (in particular Kataeb) in Lebanon's civil war.

No Power Tries to Intervene in Israel's Nuclear Arsenal

In theory, the entire concern of the Colonial State that promotes apartheid against the Palestinian population is to prevent potential adversaries from developing both nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. The prerogative to detain weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East would only belong to Israel, through the cynical complicity of the western powers. As is widely known, in October 1973, the then prime minister Golda Meir threatened a devastating nuclear strike against Cairo and Damascus. That is, since the 1970s it is certain that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Nine countries are currently nuclear arsenal holders: USA, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, United Kingdom, North Korea and Israel. Honestly, I don't recall threats from any country to retaliate, promote blockade or the ostensive presence of the International Atomic Energy Agency in high security facilities in Israel. In March 2015, in the midst of a diplomatic effort for a nuclear deal with Iran, General Collin Powell, an African American from the Republican Party who reached the highest command posts in the armed forces and in the hierarchy of the Empire's government, commented in a private email that he estimated to be on the order of 200 missiles the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Other US estimates assume that 300 missiles (including submarine launch) total under TelAviv control.

The cynicism of criminals

In the game of cynicism in the International System, the American Jewish intellectual and anti-Zionist Noam Chomsky explains to us that the powers in fact presuppose the existence of a “propaganda strategy and agenda”, in which there would be “thinkable ideas” and others not so much. Therefore, for unconfessable reasons of imperialist interests and absurd and millenarian motivations, the Colonial Apartheid State of Israel would have the right to do whatever it wanted, as long as it maintained the alliance with the USA, especially with the hardest core of its oligarchy and the chain of command in the military-technological-industrial complex.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Islamic countries in solidarity with the Palestinian Cause will have to make more and more effort in their scientific development, starting with protecting the lives of the most advanced research teams. We hope that the martyrdom of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh does not go unpunished and that we stop burying our scientists. The only certainty in support of the liberation of Palestine is that there is no way to back down and not even be afraid. Let's keep fighting.

*Bruno Beaklini is a libertarian socialist militant of Arab-Brazilian origin and editor of the channel Strategy & Analysis, political analysis for the leftmost left.

Article originally published in Middle East Monitor.