Two years ago, agents from Israel’s revered Mossad spy agency were caught on closed circuit TV in Dubai carrying out a hit on a senior Hamas leader. They were universally ridiculed.

I duly piled on in 2010, writing, "It’s bad enough that these spies can be seen in Technicolor going into public bathrooms and coming out in their laughable disguises (some looking like clones of 1970s tennis player Bobby Riggs...I doubt Mossad, known for its stealth and highly sophisticated operations, will ever live down the fact that its agents acted more like Keystone Cops than James Bond as they carried out this mission."

Well, by all accounts, Mossad lived up to its reputation earlier this month when its agents assassinated a deputy director of Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant with drama, skill, and stealth that would make Bond very proud indeed. They reportedly rode by on a motorbike, attached a magnetic bomb to his car, blew it to smithereens in broad daylight, and were long gone before anyone even realized what happened.

Not the first time

Reports are that this is the fourth time in two years an Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated in similar fashion, which all seem pursuant to a psychological warfare that Israel is waging against Iran.

But targeted assassinations will do nothing to impede Iran’s inexorable drive towards building a nuclear bomb. Not least because its nuclear scientists have far more to fear from the mullahs who have ordered them to build it than from Israeli spies who might be trying to take them out one by one.

Likewise the draconian sanctions the United States and Western countries are poised to impose on Iran will deter Iran no more than similar sanctions deterred North Korea – now a notorious and bonafide member of the nuclear club.

Of course, nobody is more aware of the limitations of targeted assassinations and sanctions (political and economic) than the Israelis. Which is why all of this psychological warfare is just ‘foreplay’ before the big, inevitable ‘bang’ to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. The only question is whether they will do it alone with the Americans.

Who’s to blame?

Mind you, the Iranians steadfastly claim that their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. Perhaps. But God help us if the United States, Israel, or a "coalition of the willing" attacks, and Iran’s nuclear program turns out to be no more threatening than the WMDs that were never found in Iraq. But God help us even more if nobody attacks, and Iran’s nuclear program turns out to have the Holocaust intent we all fear.

For the record, Iran blames Israel and the United States for this assassination – and for every other setback related to its nuclear program, including a series of cyber-attacks. For their part, Israel’s non-denial denial is as telling as the United States’s condemnation.

Anthony L. Hall is a Bahamian native with an international law practice in Washington, D.C. Read his columns and daily weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com.