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| April 2007 Issue | ||||
On January 21, 2007, Radio Farda, quoting
Iran’s central news agency, announced that …This Persian scientist had five inventions and wrote thirty-five scientific articles that were published in various scientific research journals. He ranked first in [1996] for a volume of articles; he ranked second in the applied research section of Khwarazmi International Festival in [2000]; and also in [2003] he received an award as the best researcher of the Ministry of the Defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He worked on more than twelve defense projects and maintained a research center on electromagnetism in Malik Ashtar University and Shiraz University. [3]The broadcast went on to state that the central news agency noted that Hassanpour was also awarded the first prize at the Khwarazmi International Science Festival. (No date for the award of this prize was given in the Radio Farda broadcast, but an Italian publication, citing the Iranian central news agency report, later reported that this took place in 2006.) [4] The broadcast concluded this description with a statement hinting that Hassanpour’s death was not being treated as a routine matter: “Despite all these achievements, the news of his death was announced with six days’ delay, after he was buried in the (well known) Namawaran unit of the Rezwan Cemetery of Isfahan.” The broadcast then turned to concerns regarding “unconfirmed reports” of possible radiation injuries at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, Iran’s largest nuclear research institute. (Note: The center contains the Uranium Conversion Facility, although materials handled at the facility have only low levels of radioactivity. This suggests that any radiation injuries at the Isfahan center were the result of activities outside the Uranium Conversion Facility.) The broadcast then noted a number of recent efforts to train area health workers in radiation safety; the opening of a specialized hospital unit to treat victims of radiation poisoning at Farabi Hospital in Isfahan; and a statement by authorities in the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran that appropriate health and environmental practices were in place at the Uranium Conversion Facility. The U.S.-sponsored broadcast then concluded with this cryptic statement: Although no Iranian nuclear authorities presented an opinion on the death of Mr. Ardeshir Hassanpour, and the silence continues, some observers believe that the announcement of gas-poisoning as the reason for the death of an important scientist is indeed very ambiguous news.It is not clear whether this comment is intended to hint that Hassanpour was a victim of radiation, instead of gas, poisoning, as the context would seem to imply, or whether the ambiguity at issue concerns the circumstances of the gas poisoning. Radiation poisoning, it may be noted, was used by unknown parties in November 2006 to assassinate a prominent Russian dissident, Alexander Litvinenko. [5] The Radio Farda broadcast was based in part on a story of the same date in the Jumhuri Islami [Islamic Republic], a Tehran-based Persian daily, which noted Hassanpour’s death from “gas poisoning” in a brief article on the paper’s fourth page. [6] The article, entitled, “A Grand Farewell to One of the Young Scientists of Our Country in Isfahan,” highlighted Hassanpour’s contributions as a scientist, but unlike the Radio Farda broadcast, did not state that he worked at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, noting only that “he was buried in Isfahan.” Roughly two weeks later, Hassanpour’s death was described with significant new allegations in a February 2, 2007, report by Stratfor, a private, U.S.-based firm tracking international security issues. [7] After highlighting the difficulties that Israel might have in using a military strike to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, the report stated that Israel was apparently turning instead to covert action to halt the Iranian effort. Noting the Radio Farda report, which Stratfor stated, “implicitly related the cause for Hassanpour’s death to exposure to radioactive rays, though the details were murky,” the report continued that “sources close to Israeli intelligence” had advised Stratfor that Hassanpour was believed to be one of Iran’s most important nuclear scientists, who played a key role at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. It also stated that he had been “a target” of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. [8] Stratfor noted that Israel was suspected of assassinating several nuclear scientists assisting the Iraqi nuclear program during the early 1980s. The Stratfor report also highlighted that the Iranian authorities had delayed reporting Hassanpour’s death for nearly a week. Other details in the Stratfor report, however, cast doubt on its reliability. It declared, for example, that Radio Farda announced Hassanpour’s death on January 25, but the broadcast actually took place on January 21. Stratfor also failed to note that the Radio Farda broadcast listed the cause of Hassanpour’s death as gas poisoning, before it may have implied the possibility that radiation poisoning was involved. Stratfor also incorrectly stated that Hassanpour had founded the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, which has been operating since the mid-1970s, rather than a subsidiary center dealing with electromagnetism. On February 4, Hassanpour’s death received widespread international attention, following a story in the Sunday Times of London. [9] This report, citing the January 21 Radio Farda broadcast, stated that Hassanpour worked at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility and that the cause of his death was gas poisoning. It then quoted a Stratfor specialist as declaring that there was “ ‘very strong intelligence’ to suggest that he [Hassanpour] had been assassinated by the Israelis, who have repeatedly threatened to prevent Iran acquiring the bomb.” [10] The Sunday Times went on to state that in 2004, Hassanpour had won “Iran’s top military research prize,” an event the Radio Farda broadcast had placed in 2003. Also on February 4, a story in the Jerusalem Post reporting on Hassanpour’s death offered additional allegations. It drew on the Radio Farda and Stratfor reports, but gave additional weight to radiation poisoning as the cause of death. The Jerusalem Post stated, without qualification, that the Stratfor report “said the physicist died from ‘radioactive poisoning’ as part of a Mossad effort to halt the Iranian nuclear program through ‘secret operations.’ ” The Jerusalem Post report added that a website run by “expatriate Iranian communists” had stated that several other Iranian scientists had been injured in the attack on Hassanpour and were treated at nearby hospitals and that “Iranian physicians are trying to determine the circumstances of the deaths, and believe they may have to deal with similar incidents in the future.” [11] The Jerusalem Post also pointed out that Hassanpour had recently worked at Isfahan’s Malik Ashtar University of Technology. It noted that “several departments of that institution have been implicated as being involved in Iran’s secret nuclear program.” It further stated that the rector of the university, Mahdi Najad Nuri, also a general in the Revolutionary Guards, was included on the list of individuals contained in UN Security Council Resolution 1737 who are alleged to be associated with sensitive aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and whose travel should be closely monitored by member states. [12] On February 6, a panel discussion on Al-Arabiyah Television, an independent station financed by Arab businessmen, offered information at odds with previous stories. An introductory report to the panel discussion claimed Hassanpour was a prominent rocket scientist, who played a major role in Iran’s missile program. One panelist asserted that Iranian agents had assassinated him when he refused to continue working on these systems. [13] Iranian authorities responded to these varied claims by denying that Hassanpour’s death was the result of unnatural causes or that he played any role in the country’s nuclear activities. On February 4, 2007, the Iranian Fars News Agency, for example, quoted an official Iranian “source” as declaring Hassanpour had been a professor at Shiraz University, who had died in his sleep because of a faulty gas heater and was not connected in any way with the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility. [14] On February 10, Dr. Mohammad Hadi Sadeghi, the Chancellor of the University of Shiraz, repeated this characterization of Hassanpour’s death, stating that he died in his sleep of carbon-monoxide asphyxiation due to a faulty heater in his university housing. [15] Five days later, Reza Aghazadeh, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran denied that any Iranian nuclear scientist had died, declaring that all the country’s nuclear experts, “Thank God, are sound and safe.” [16] Iranian sources also sought to discount the possibility of an Israeli operation, questioning the ability of Mossad to carry out operations within Iran. An unnamed “informed source” told the Fars News Agency that Mossad had no operational capability within Iran and that “if Mossad was capable of doing great things, it should have solved the domestic crises of Israel.” [17] Based on press accounts and independent research by WMD Insights staff, it can be established, at the least, that Hassanpour was a physicist who worked both in the Department of Physics at the University of Shiraz and the Department of Physics at Malek University of Technology. [18] His specialty was electro-magnetism and, at the latter institution, he apparently worked in the Electroceram Research Center, although this is not noted on the university’s website. [19] This does not, however, rule out the possibility that in addition to this public persona, he may also have played a significant, unpublicized role in Iran’s nuclear program. Hassanpour’s publication history, as indicated by what can be found on the Internet and in science and technology publications, is sparse and limited to the past five years. That could indicate either that he was not a prominent figure in his field or that his work was so closely related to clandestine elements of Iran’s nuclear program that he was not allowed to publish for fear that he might disclose secrets regarding the Iranian effort. Hassanpour’s publications indicate that his work focused on the development of high powered ferrits (a type of magnet). [20] Although high powered magnets have applications in the production of gas centrifuges for enriching uranium, until the recent media reports, his published papers and academic history, as publicly disclosed, did not link him to the nuclear field. One factor contributing to speculation that the Mossad may have had a hand in Hassanpour’s death is that Israeli intelligence agents are alleged to have carried out similar operations in the past. In 1962, for example, upon discovering Egypt had employed former Nazi rocket scientists for its domestic missile program, Israel is said to have launched Operation Damocles, designed to intimidate the Germans into leaving the Egyptian program. [21] As many as five scientists may have been killed by Israeli agents as part of this undertaking, according to some reports. [22] Israeli targeting of WMD scientists is alleged to have continued into the late 1970s and early 1980s, focused on slowing the Iraqi nuclear program. In 1980, for example, Yahya al-Mishad, an Egyptian scientist working for Iraq at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center was found murdered in his hotel room while on a trip to France to facilitate technology transfers. Accounts at the time alleged the Mossad was responsible. [23] Based on published reports, it is not possible at this juncture to determine the exact circumstances surrounding Hassanpour’s death or the role he may have played in Iran’s nuclear affairs. Nor is it possible to resolve why the Western media, beginning with Radio Farda’s January 21 broadcast, so consistently linked the young scientist’s passing with Iran’s nuclear program. If, notwithstanding Iranian claims to the contrary, Hassanpour was, in fact, a key player in that program, his death could represent a significant setback for the Iranian nuclear enterprise. In addition, if he died suspiciously, Iranian officials could well see the episode as one in a series of intensifying external efforts to influence the country’s nuclear trajectory. Such efforts have included a first round of UN sanctions in December 2006 and their augmentation in March 2007; Russia’s suspension of work in March 2007 on the Bushehr nuclear power plant; and, also in March 2007, the report of the possible abduction or defection, while visiting Turkey, of Ali Reza Asgari, a deputy defense minister and former Revolutionary Guards commander, said to have ties to the Iranian nuclear program. [24] Jason Risdal and Jack Boureston - FirstWatch International, Leonard S. Spector - Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and Ibrahim Al-Marashi - Koc University
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