[ad_1]
A bulletproof car. A remote controlled machine gun. An apparently self-destructing vehicle.
According to the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars, the assassination proceeded roughly as follows: Fakhrizadeh was traveling with his wife in a bulletproof car in the town of Absard, east of Tehran. They were surrounded by a three-vehicle security service.
Fars reported that Fakhrizadeh heard what sounded like bullets hitting his car and decided to investigate for himself. When he got out of the vehicle, he was shot at least three times by a Nissan car that was about 150 meters (164 yards) – the length of a football field and a half. The Nissan then exploded. The entire event lasted for three minutes, the news agency said.
The semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported that Fakhrizadeh’s car was hit by gunfire, followed by an explosion and other gunfire.
IRIB, a state-owned television station, reported that the explosion occurred first, followed by gunfire from the attackers.
According to intelligence and security experts who spoke to CNN, the technology is not that far-fetched, but they are skeptical that such a sensitive and precise operation would have been carried out remotely.
A remote transaction performed remotely has its advantages, but three experts suggest that it introduces more risk factors into a transaction with little apparent margin for error.
“Generally speaking, it (a ranged weapon) is a device that can be effective in certain circumstances,” said an Israeli security expert who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the problem.
“You solve the problem of getting too close to the target,” he explained. “It’s pretty precise. You can practice a lot. And you can create a stable situation when there are a lot of moving parts.”
Iran claims to have evidence that Israel was behind the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, one of the country’s top nuclear scientists, but it has presented none of its evidence and Israel has not claimed responsibility. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Fakhrizadeh’s death.
Had the assassination been carried out remotely, from another country, or from a distance of a few kilometers, it would have been extremely complex, with much of the risk occurring before the murder itself.
A country or actor would have to smuggle valuable technology, including communications relays, satellite receivers and a weapon that could be used remotely, experts say. To avoid immediate detection, the equipment would likely have to be smuggled in piecemeal and assembled once inside Iran. Throughout the process, the equipment should be secretly stored somewhere.
Fars claims that the vehicle used in the assassination exploded, so some sort of remotely activated explosive should also be stored safely.
During the operation itself, none of this equipment could fail, as there would be no one on site to fix it. Communication failure. A stuck gun. A self-destruct device that did not explode. Any single failure could jeopardize the entire assassination and leave technology by the wayside for Iranian security forces to intercept.
“I don’t think (a remote controlled pistol) was used there,” the security expert said. “I think the Iranians published this to downplay the scale of the group that did it and the extent of penetration into the country by operational elements.”
But he said remote assassination “is not a fantasy, it is a good idea.”
The technology for shooting a target from a remote control vehicle is not particularly new. Rafael, an Israeli defense company specializing in weapons, sells its Samson 30 ranged weapon system to more than 25 other countries and, while it’s far too big to fit in a Nissan, it’s hardly the the only system of this type on the market. Germany, Spain, the United States, Australia and others all make similar systems.
“It’s something we already have in the military,” said the retired brigadier. General Nitzan Nuriel, former director of the Israel Counterterrorism Bureau, noting that this does not mean that Israel was responsible for the assassination.
“We have a remote controlled machine gun,” he said. “We have observation capabilities around Gaza that also have the ability to fire, and that’s controlled from afar. It’s not something you have to have someone in place to do.”
Jack Watling, a defense expert at the Royal United Service Institute, told CNN that the primary use of the technology is “area denial,” which he says “means trying, for example, to engage all targets in a defined area (where) people are not supposed to be. ”
Watling said such technology would not be effective for precision hitting against a single target. “It wouldn’t work in that case,” he said, explaining that while the ability to locate a target with an automated weapon is “theoretically possible, it could potentially target something you don’t want.”
He said previous assassinations blamed on Israel were carried out using much simpler methods, such as bombs placed on cars by attackers on motorcycles – as in the case of Majid Shahriari in 2010 – or drive-by shootings. , as in the case of Daryoush Rezaie in 2011. Israel never claimed responsibility for the murder of Shahriari or Rezaie.
“An assassination, when it’s done, you want it to be as reliable as possible,” Watling said. “A lot of planning involved, a lot of intelligence to figure out the movement of the vehicle and when they can get close, but they’ve tried using very, very simple methods in the past.”
“There is always a lot of conspiracy and speculation about these events, and unless the material is presented I think, while plausible, we should not automatically assume that it is as described (by the media Iranians), ”he said.
Iran says it has evidence that the weapon used in the attack and collected from the scene “bears the logo and specifications of the Israeli military industry,” according to Press TV, an anonymous source. But Iranian officials have yet to show such evidence or show footage that would confirm their claim that Israel was involved in the assassination.
The head of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, said the operation was complex and used electronic equipment with no one on site, the Islamic Republic-led news agency said. by the state.
“The operation was very complex, using electronic equipment and no one was present at the scene,” Ali Shamakhani told state television.
But there is one decidedly low-tech detail on which the whole operation relies. Fakhrizadeh chose to leave the protection of his bulletproof car after being hit by gunfire, claim Fars and other Iranian news agencies, and it was only then that he been shot. A complex assassination, which must have required months of planning and years of intelligence gathering, appears to be based on this very moment, if Iranian media are to be believed, and would have failed completely if Fakhrizadeh had only stayed behind. inside his vehicle.
Israeli military journalist Yossi Melman, author of “Spies Against Armageddon,” on Israel’s spy story, has dismissed Iranian accounts of the murder.
“I have stopped believing the official and semi-official media reports in Iran regarding the circumstances of Fakhrizadeh’s assassination,” he said on Twitter. “They publish various and even contradictory details: assassins? Motorcyclists? A car bomb? A machine gun that fires automatically? It seems to me that the Iranian and Israeli intelligence services to which this is attributed deal with psychological warfare, disinformation and obstruction of evidence. “
[ad_2]
Source link