We may not be dropping bombs from drones and airplanes atop Iranian nuclear facilities just yet, but that doesn’t mean that mid east countries have averted war. Earlier this week an explosion at an Iranian missile base killed at least 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, who has been described as the architect of the the Iranian missile research and development program, as well as being the commander charged with “ensuring self sufficiency” of the state of Iran.

The explosion has been played off as an accident by Western and Iranian media, but one eye witness account suggests that the explosion did not occur in a manner typical of an arms depot explosion:

Saturday’s blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. “Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility,” the resident says. “All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was.”

Considering the revelations provided by Israeli news reports and Western intelligence sources, there is a strong likelihood that the purported accident in Iran was actually a covert action executed by Israeli intelligence units within the famed Mossad spy organization – the same organization believed to be responsible for deploying the Stuxnet systems virus that destroyed Iranian centrifuges recently.

Via The Intel Hub:

Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline “Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base.” Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink.

“Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?” asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran’s nuclear and military nexus.

For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday’s massive blast just outside Tehran.

It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. “Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,” the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon.

“There are more bullets in the magazine,” the official says.

…

Last week’s report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot “toward the appropriate site.”

…

Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel’s threat to launch airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website on Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions.

Source: Time Magazine

Most astute readers of global affairs may have come to a similar conclusion as soon as reports of the Iranian missile base explosion hit the newswires. This latest incident in Iran occured at a munitions depot and/or research facility of some type, so it may have targeted physical armaments that may have included Shahab-3 missiles  (the very same missiles Iran has reportedly been trying to mount with a nuclear warhead). And in hallmark Mossad style, which often involves multiple objectives, the General responsible for overseeing the deployment of defensive and offensive ballistic countermeasures was also killed.

This is serious business and Israel has made no attempt to hide its disdain for Iran, or their desire to launch an all out military attack. And now, even the Iranian propaganda machine, like their counterparts here in the West, is preparing their population for the possibility of military strikes and extended military entanglements that may result if such a scenario were to unfold.

The conflict may well be coming to a head over the next few months. Both, the United States and Iran, have mobilized military assets over the last few years, and a recent report from a NATO envoy indicates military planning against Iran and Syria has been underway for quite a while. In July of this year, inside sources indicated that the Pentagon issued a warning order for military leadership to prepare for war.

If Israel launches an attack on Iran, whether unilaterally or with the support of Libyan-No-Fly-Zone membership states, all bets are off. Iran, unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, is reported to have formidable military capabilities, and if they have actually produced a nuclear bomb and miniaturized it to fit on a Shahab-3 missile, then we’re talking about the real possibility of a mass-casualty war in the middle east with over half a billion people sitting in the cross-fire.

We may not understand the reasons for, or implications of, each move on the grand chessboard but the buildup to World War III simply can’t be ignored. Even though the talking heads on TV have yet to tell us it is so, Israel and Iran are at war. Thing are really starting to warm up in the middle east. It’s only a matter of time before it gets hot enough to fuse glass.