Explaining explosions in Iran

Michael Ledeen:

Another week, another explosion at or near an Iranian military installation (or is it a nuclear research facility?).  As usual, the regime doesn’t know what to say.  The mullahcracy is so intensely divided that different “spokesmen” from different ministries/news outlets/cults/mafias put out different versions.  There was an explosion, or at least “the sound of an explosion.”  This goes out on the wires.  Then, no, there was no explosion, it was just the sound of our fierce military training.  Then again, yes, there was something, but not to worry, just go home and shut up.  And so it goes in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as our president so loves to call his intended international partners.

I’ve been reporting for many months about the ongoing sabotage of pipelines, refineries, military sites, Revolutionary Guards’ aircraft and trains, and groups of regime thugs. and have received the usual cold shoulder from publications “of record,” which is to say silent sneers.  But the tempo of attacks, most notably the monster blast a week ago that vaporized General Moghaddam and his foreign visitors (at least some of whom had taken the shuttle from Pyongyang to be with him on what they wrongly expected would be a happy day) led the Washington Post’s man in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink, to note the phenomenon in a useful story entitled“Mysterious Explosions Pose Dilemma for Iranian leaders.”  He gives us a pretty good rundown of the explosions, and, living as he does in Tehran, gives ample space to regime “explanations” such as bad welding, western sanctions, and so forth.  Given the number of foreign journalists who have come to a bad end in Iran, you’d do the same.

Safe in London, on the other hand, Roger Cohen of the New York Times has no doubt about what’s happening:  his guy Obama is waging a secret war against the mullahs. “It would take tremendous naïveté,” he lectures the great unwashed,  “to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israeli drive to sabotage Iran’s efforts to develop a military nuclear capacity. An intense, well-funded cyberwar against Tehran is ongoing.”

So color me tremendously naive.  I would really love to believe Roger Cohen;  the very idea that Obama, at long last,  has ordered a response to the Iranian war against the west (totally unmentioned, needless to say), is delightful.  But I don’t believe it, and Cohen doesn’t give us any evidence for it, aside from intoning, as the mullahs themselves are so wont to do, that it’s the infidels and the Zionists.

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The religious bigots are having trouble explaining why their world is exploding.  While infidels and Zionist may have something to do with it, I suspect there are some Iranians who would like to bring down this evil regime.

Reza Kahlili reports:

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As I reported in May, Ayatollah Khamenei ordered the Revolutionary Guards to arm their missiles with nuclear warheads before the end of the Iranian year - March 2012 - and that the Guards were already in possession of two nuclear-capable warheads. According to the agreement between the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Defense, eight more nuclear warheads will be produced and delivered to the Revolutionary Guards within the next several months. 

It is now clear that the missile project on which the Guards were working was the one Ayatollah Khamenei ordered that would weaponize their missiles. Even though there is no evidence pointing to a nuclear blast, sources indicate that Iran’s missile experts were working on a warhead that could carry a nuclear payload, and the explosion caused major devastation to the Guards’ base and much of the surrounding area.
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They appear to be up to something.