Oh my.

We already knew that Majid Shahriari, killed when a mysterious individual on a scooter attached a bomb to his car window this morning local, was a top nuclear scientist working on the country’s nuclear program. The Iranian government, of course, blames western and Israeli agents of perpetrating the attack and a similar one that wounded another scientist.

Now there’s a report, granted, from Debka, that says Shahriari was Iran’s top man when it came to stopping the Stuxnet computer virus, whihc has harmed Iran’s uranium enrichment process by screwing with industrial equipment and computer processes in the facility at Natanz.

Prof. Majid Shahriari, who died when his car was attacked in North Tehran Monday, Nov. 29, headed the team Iran established for combating the Stuxnet virus rampaging through its nuclear and military networks. His wife was injured. The scientist’s death deals a major blow to Iran’s herculean efforts to purge its nuclear and military control systems of the destructive worm since it went on the offensive six months ago. Only this month, Stuxnet shut down nuclear enrichment at Natanz for six days from Nov. 16-22 and curtailed an important air defense exercise.

Prof. Shahriari was the Iranian nuclear program’s top expert on computer codes and cyber war.

Stuff that makes you go “hmmm”.

Via HAH.

Addition: For the record, I don’t believe for a moment that the United States was responsible for the attack. We’re not even capable of stopping a narcissistic Australian hacker with a bad haircut from leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.