Iranian dissidents have long suspected that the country’s Islamist regime has used the cover of its not-so-covert war with Israel to crack down on internal opponents, and that a leading Iranian nuclear scientist whose death was blamed on Mossad might really have been killed by his own government.
In a blog post Monday, however, London-based dissident Potkin Azarmehr pointed out that the Israeli passport displayed by Iranian television was stamped 2003, when Fashi was 15 years old, but bore the photo of a hirsute man in his 20s who is not looking directly into the camera. “No passport will be issued with such a picture, anywhere in the world,” wrote Azarmehr. “You need a headshot where you are open-eyed AND looking into the camera.”
Other news outlets that have reported Azarmehr’s suspicions, however, have focused on the alleged forgery of the passport.