I am strongly tempted to go ballistic now, but I will give the cops a chance to examine the evidence here first. One major argument against this being what it looks like is that assassinating dissidents on American soil is something that the KGB was hesitant to do during the height of the Cold War; if the Iranians think that they can get away with something similiar then they are going to get an unpleasant surprise. Yes, even under Obama: it’s the weak ones that you have to worry about when it comes to this sort of thing. They’re peculiarly vulnerable to disproportionate – or at least very explosive – responses.
But it may have just been a coincidence.
Moe Lane
Moe – just to play Devil’s advocate for a moment – how valuable a target would Ms. Baghahzadeh have been for the Iranian regime? An assassination requires a significant use of resources; there would need to be a good payoff for the effort. She’s not well-known to the general public, at least not here in flyover country.
UtahMan: I wondered that myself. It might be that she happened to be personally significant to somebody in a position of power; or that somebody screwed up and issued an order that they didn’t actually mean to do; or that, indeed, she wasn’t murdered for her political views at all. It does definitely look like a premeditated killing, though.
Sorry for the mispelling. Ms. Bagherzadeh deserves better.
Utah the Iranians have had intelligence capabilities in place in this country since I was a young. The Shah was assassinating people here when he was in power. Either that, or the Iranian people are literally the most unlucky people on the face of the planet.
Catseye – not disagreeing with that. I’m just wondering if they would be willing to use/risk those assets now, with two carriers sitting just to the south. The Ayatollah & Co. aren’t the most rational people, but they have been more clever than I’d hoped they’d be so far.
“There is no such thing as coincedince.”
If the mullahs truly believe we’re behind the spectacular malfunctions of their physicists cars, why would they hesitate to do this? Both they and the left will resort to “the Americans started it”.
Unfortunately Rob you are probably right. And both groups will use it to justify each other’s actions.