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Iranian Official Arrested in Istanbul over Dissident's Killing

A ferry sails on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 27, 2019. (Reuters)
A ferry sails on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 27, 2019. (Reuters)
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Iranian Official Arrested in Istanbul over Dissident's Killing

A ferry sails on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 27, 2019. (Reuters)
A ferry sails on the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 27, 2019. (Reuters)

Turkey has arrested an Iranian official suspected of instigating the killing of an Iranian dissident in Istanbul 15 months ago, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Confirming a report in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper, the sources said Mohammad Reza Naserzadeh was detained earlier this week on suspicion of planning the shooting of Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, a critic of Iran’s political and military leadership.

The case could strain ties between Iran and Turkey amid deep differences in Syria where they back opposing sides in the 10-year conflict.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the newspaper report was “baseless”.

Vardanjani was shot dead on an Istanbul street in November 2019, a year after leaving Iran and criticizing what he said was corruption in Iran in a series of social media posts.

Last year two senior Turkish officials told Reuters his killing was instigated by intelligence officials at Iran’s consulate in Istanbul. A senior US administration official also said Washington believed Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security was directly involved.

At the time, one of the Turkish officials identified the two suspects by initials - one set of which matched Naserzadeh’s.

Sabah said Naserzadeh was working at the civic registry department of the Iranian consulate in Istanbul but Reuters was not able to independently confirm that element of its report.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denied that any consulate staff member was involved in Vardanjani’s killing and said Iran was in talks with Turkish officials to shed light on the issue, according to the foreign ministry’s website.

In December, Turkish officials accused Iranian authorities of targeting another opponent in Istanbul when they announced they had detained 11 people involved in the abduction and smuggling to Iran of an Iranian dissident wanted in connection with a deadly attack in southwestern Iran.

Habib Chaab, an Iranian ethnic Arab separatist leader, was drugged and kidnapped by a network working “on behalf of Iran’s intelligence service” after being lured into flying to Turkey by an Iranian intelligence operative, a senior official said.

Last week an Iranian diplomat accused of planning to bomb a meeting of an exiled opposition group was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in Belgium, the first trial of an Iranian official for suspected terrorism in Europe since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

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Fire Tornadoes are a Risk Under California's Extreme Wildfire Conditions

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
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Fire Tornadoes are a Risk Under California's Extreme Wildfire Conditions

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP
The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” - The AP

As if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter fire tornadoes — a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.

The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a “particularly dangerous situation” in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they're possible given the extreme conditions.

 

A look at fire tornadoes according to The AP.

What is a fire tornado? Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornadoes involve clouds generated by the fire itself.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s glossary of wildland fire terms doesn’t include an entry for fire tornado, but it defines a fire whirl as a “spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame,” and says large whirls “have the intensity of a small tornado.”

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce clouds that in turn can produce lightning or a vortex of ash, smoke and flames, said Leila Carvalho, professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“There is a rotation caused by very strong wind shear and a very hot, localized low-pressure system,” she said.

What is a fire tornado capable of? Fire tornadoes can make fires stronger by sucking up air, Carvalho said. “It creates a tornado track, and wherever this goes, the destruction is like any other tornado.”

In 2018, a fire tornado the size of three football fields killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire near near Redding, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco in northern California. Scientists later described an ice-capped cloud that reached 7 miles (11 km) into the air and caused winds up to 143 mph (230 kph).

Research also suggests fire tornadoes can carry airborne embers, also called firebrands, over long distances, said James Urban, an assistant professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They also can change the fire’s behavior, he said.

“That’s also something that is dangerous and scary for first responders, or really anyone,” he said. “It can change and maybe go in a different direction.”

The interaction between wind, the fire plume and topography determines whether a tornado will develop, he said. For example, sometimes a certain topography will restrict airflow in such a way that a spiral pattern develops.

Can you make one in a lab? Together with San José State University, Worcester Polytech is part of a Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. In the lab in Worcester, researchers have created small fire tornadoes by putting up walls around a fire or arranging a bunch of little fires that together restrict airflow. But that’s on a much smaller scale than what’s happening with the wildfires.

“We’ve got the biggest fire lab in the US for a university, but we cannot get something the size of what’s been reported at these fires,” he said. “You can’t really bottle that and put it in a lab.”