Last Monday a huge, double explosion was heard in Tehran. Based on Western spy satellites, the following picture is reported by Debka.com, a site close to Israeli intelligence, but also known for less than 100% accuracy.

1. The double blast involved an advanced Iranian Seijil-2 missile, and devastated a 20 square mile area of the Alghadir missile base of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the inner guard of the regime. The devastated missile base is located 30 miles west of Tehran.

2. Thirty-six military funerals were held in the following days. The dead include the chief of Iran's ballistic missile program, Major Gen. Moghaddam, and other top missile experts.

3. Moghaddam may have set off the double explosion himself by ordering a demonstration explosion of a new warhead for the missile. Debka speculates that the computer control system for the Seijil-2 demonstration warhead was infected by an advanced version of the Stuxnet virus or the new Duqu virus, or both.

Giving the command to explode the demo warhead may have triggered a computer signal that exploded both the warhead and the missile itself, thereby killing the chief of the missile program. That may account for the double explosion that was heard in Tehran, 30 miles away.

It is believed that an embedded sabotage virus is still infecting Iran's missile control systems, many months after the Stuxnet virus was first identified.

4. Moghaddan held two significant positions in his rise to head Iran's ballistic missile program. First, he was a personal security guard for the ruling ayatollah, Khamenei. Second, Moghaddan headed the massive missile armament of Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist group that now controls Lebanon.

If this was indeed a targeted assassination, the message it sends to Iran's power clique is unmistakable. Iranian commanders must therefore be worried that a simple test command will kill them and their officers. Such a worry may not stop Iran's missile program, but it will sow fear in the upper ranks of the regime.

5. Iran's advanced ballistic missile program has therefore been decapitated for the time being. Nobody can be certain how far the damage will spread. It is certainly far more devastating than was first reported.

This is good news for anyone living within range of Iran's ballistic missiles, which is believed to be 1,200 miles. This range includes parts of Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Iraq, Turkey, and Israel.

Imagine nuclear missiles with a 1,200 mile range pointed at the United States from Cuba, and you get the picture.

If the Stuxnet scenario is correct, it is likely to involve a joint Israeli-CIA effort. None of Iran's near neighbors can live with nuclear missiles in the hands of a martyrdom regime. Cooperation by Russia and others may therefore be part of the picture.