The Wars of Assassination

Shortly before noon on the morning of July 22, the sort of day when Washingtonians go Southern and fan themselves and sigh, Ali Akbar Tabatabai, late of the Shah's employ, strode to answer the bell of his contemporary rustic two-story home and found Iran standing in the doorway. You may imagine his surprise. Who would have thought to find Iran in such a place; in tasteful suburban Bethesda, Md., no less; dressed up as a postman, of all things; with a gun in its hand to boot? But there it was, large as death for Mr. Tabatabai to contemplate in the second or two before his homeland in disguise made its special delivery to his abdomen. Assassins are not what they used to be.

What has changed, especially in the past few years, is that assassination has become an official form of warfare. National leaders like Libya's Gaddafi and Syria's Assad announce open season on their enemies, and whether or not they actually hire the hit men or, more likely, merely encourage assassins by their lusty rhetoric, they leave little doubt of their connivance. Not far from where Mr. Tabatabai met his postman, former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier was blown apart on Embassy Row in 1976. The day before the Tabatabai assassination, former Syrian Prime Minister Salah Eddin al-Bitar was shot to death in Paris. Two days before that, former Prime Minister Nihat Erim of Turkey was murdered in a suburb of Istanbul. That brings to nearly 1,000 the number of people killed in these "wars" since 1970—not all under the tutelage of governments, yet enough to create a problem. There is not much the world can do about a lone screwball or a roving band, but is it equally powerless to deal with an assassin state?

Of course, in order to stop these assassinations one must first sincerely want to do it. One big reason that places like Libya, Syria and Iran may get away with murder in other countries is that those other countries have decided that they prefer oil to order. The absence of sanctuaries in the modern world must be of general help as well. He who would mow down an archbishop saying Mass in a chapel in San Salvador (or storm a mosque, or sack an embassy) would hardly hesitate to invade Bethesda. The public heart recoils at such goings-on, but briefly. Before Mr. Tabatabai's murder, someone suggested to his neighbors, the Milks, that they paint a purple arrow on their garage, with the message: "The Milks live here—Tabatabai lives over there." Just funning, of course, but on the money.