One important part of the suspected covert war with Iran, in addition to the drone surveillance and cyberwarfare, concerns the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Several scientists have been murdered under questionable circumstances over the past several months. And now, another death has been reported:

An Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility has been killed in a bomb explosion, the latest in a series of assassinations and attempted killings linked by the country’s authorities to a secret war by Israel and the US to stop the development of what Tehran insists would be a peaceful nuclear capability.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in central Iran, died after two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs to his car, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Two other Iranian nationals were reported injured in the blast, which comes at a time of rising international tension.

Safar Ali Baratloo, a senior security official, was quoted by Fars as saying the attack was the work of Israelis.

“The magnetic bomb is of the same types already used to assassinate our scientists,” he said. “The terrorist attack is a conspiracy to undermine the [2 March] parliamentary elections.”

Israeli officials have previously hinted about covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

Maybe this has nothing to do with Israel or the US. I can see why the Iranians would want to blame them. I can’t see why they would want to kill their own nuclear scientists just to give them a talking point about Israeli mischief. You would think they would want to hold on to their assets. The case for Iranian duplicity makes little sense, and the most obvious explanation of the car bomb-style assassinations suggests that they come from those who want to stop Iran from furthering its nuclear program. That’s the Occam’s razor argument here.

I mean, we’re not talking about car accidents or other unfortunate events. We’re talking about remote-control car bombs, suicide attacks and drive-by shootings. There’s nothing subtle going on here, and the killings have all the hallmarks of covert operations. In fact, as much as the assassinations are presumed to have the intention of degrading Iranian nuclear capability, they may also be intended to kill the nuclear scientists in the most showy way possible, to deter other Iranian intellectuals from joining up on the nuclear program.

Keep in mind that the Secretary of Defense confirmed on national television just a few days ago that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There’s no public, credible evidence to the contrary. And yet, over the past couple years, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Western or Israeli interests are spying on Iran from above, designing cyberworms to disable their technologies and killing their scientists.

Like Glenn Greenwald, I remember when Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds suggested that the US should kill Iranian nuclear scientists, and how liberals unanimously condemned him for such a wild suggestion. Now someone is actually carrying out the assassinations. Where is the outrage?