Inside Story

Targeting Iran’s nuclear scientists

We discuss whether Iran’s nuclear programme is effectively under attack and who is behind it.

Whether Iran’s nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes or not, it needs some pretty impressive brains behind it, to make it happen at all.

But targeting Iran’s nuclear programme seems to have become about targeting the brains behind it.

Two of the scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme were targeted in twin attacks in Tehran on Monday. One died, the other is injured.
 
It is not the first time it has happened, nor is it the only means with which Iran’s nuclear scientists have been targeted.

Is the nuclear programme effectively under attack? Is Israel or the CIA behind it, as Iran claims, or who really stands to benefit? And how will Iran respond?

Joining the programme are Ghanbar Naderi, a journalist and political analyst, Joshua Goodman, the programme director at the Transatlantic Institute, and Ian Black, the Middle East editor at the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

This episode of Inside Story aired from Tuesday, November 30, 2010.