No, it wasn’t one of those typical boring car bombs. You know the kinds in the mobster movies where the poor guys leaves his house or a restaurant, gets in his car, starts the ignition, and KABOOM!.

Heck no. Mr. 007, Mission Impossible rides up on his motorcycle along side the scientists’ car, sticks a magnetic bomb on the car and blows it sky-high. Then the motorcycle bandit rides off and vanishes.

The New York Times

A bomber on a motorcycle killed a scientist from Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site and his bodyguard-driver on Wednesday during the morning commute in Tehran, Iranian media reported, in an assassination that could further elevate international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program and stoke the country’s growing anti-Western belligerence.

It was the fourth such attack reported in two years and, as after the previous episodes, Iran accused the United States and Israel of responsibility. The White House condemned the attack and denied any responsibility. The official reaction in Israel appeared to be more cryptic.

Iranian news accounts said the suspected assassin had attached a magnetized explosive device to the scientist’s car and escaped during the rush hour in northern Tehran.

CNN | Global Public Square

"No one doubts that Israeli and Western operators are behind recent assassinations of nuclear scientists on the streets of Tehran. And the sudden frequency of ‘accidents’ at various factories and Revolutionary Guards bases has done nothing to change the minds of either government officials or the general public about the nuclear program," writes Hooman Majd in Foreign Affairs. "Does anyone doubt that some combination of the two nations completely obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program–Israel and the U.S.–are responsible? At the very least, there has been no denunciation from any Obama officials of whoever it might be carrying out such acts," writes Glen Greenwald on Salon.com.

"It is true that the extensive circumstantial evidence is damning, and Iran has never fully implemented its Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Safeguards Agreement. But is it in U.S. national interest to bomb Iran to defend the principle of full cooperation with the IAEA? I would say no," writes Micah Zenko on his CFR blog, Politics, Power, and Preventive Action.