Attack on Iran missile base points to Mossad - or does it?

IT APPEARS increasingly likely that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was involved in Saturday's explosion at an Iranian military base. The blast, which follows tensions between the two countries over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, killed 17 Revolutionary Guards, including Brigadier General Hassan Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran's missile development programme.

The base is reported to house Shihab 3 weapons (pictured above), medium-range missiles that, at their longest range, are apparently capable of reaching Israel.

Israeli daily Ynet initially said: "Some assessments indicate that the explosion may have been the result of a military operation based on intelligence information".

But US blogger Richard Silverstein went further, claiming that "it was the work of the Mossad" and citing a senior Israeli source who had apparently "never been wrong so far in the reports he's offered".

His account was soon backed up by Time's Karl Vick, who quoted a separate "Western intelligence source" confirming that Mossad were indeed behind the attack. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official told Time.

Silverstein also claimed that Mossad had worked "in collaboration with the MEK [Mujahideen-e Khalq]", the exiled Iranian opposition group currently campaigning to be de-listed as a terrorist organisation by the US.

Spokesman Shahin Gobadi denied "absolutely" that the MEK was involved in the blast but Silverstein insists that "it is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror".

Richard Spencer in The Daily Telegraph notes that although reports of Mossad's involvement are "unverifiable", Saturday's explosion joins a long list of setbacks suffered by Iran's nuclear system over the past few years which were "probably" orchestrated by Mossad.

But some observers say that the attribution of all attacks on Iran to Mossad gives them more credit than they are due. As Vick notes in Time, although Israel is not the only country conducting intelligence operations inside Iran, "the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere, is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defence can be summed up in the word deterrence." ·