TEHRAN – Two car bomb blasts killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another in Tehran yesterday in what Iranian officials called an Israeli or US-sponsored attack on its atomic programme.
The rare attacks on the Iranian capital were carried out ahead of a possible meeting between Iran and major powers next month to discuss Iranian nuclear activity, which western officials suspect is aimed at developing atomic bombs. Iran denies this.
In recent months Iran has arrested a number of alleged “nuclear spies”, warning citizens against leaking information to foreign secret services. “Majid Shahriyari was martyred and his wife was injured . . . Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and his wife were both wounded,” state radio said, referring to the two scientists.
Mr Abbasi-Davani has been personally subjected to UN sanctions due to what western officials said was his role in suspected nuclear weapons research. He was “not seriously injured in the blast”, the Mehr news agency said.
Iran’s atomic energy agency chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Mr Shahriyari had a role in one of its biggest nuclear projects, but did not elaborate, official news agency Irna reported. Mr Salehi warned enemies not to “play with fire” by carrying out such attacks. “Our nation’s patience has a limit . . . When it is over our enemies will face a tedious fate.”
Iranian television showed police and plain-clothes agents examining a car with what looked like shrapnel holes in its bonnet. Another car had its windows smashed and a door blown off.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Iranian officials and media blamed Israel, which Tehran calls “the Zionist regime”, and the US for Mr Shahriyari’s death. “The sinister Americans and Zionists thought they could derail our nation from its scientific path and stop our elites from progressing in science by killing our scientists,” Mohammad-Reza Naqdi, head of the pro-government Islamic Basij militia, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
“We will certainly avenge these crimes of the Americans and Zionists and soon the gallows will be earmarked for the retribution of the blood of Shahriyari.”
A bomb killed another nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, in Tehran in January. Some opposition websites said he had backed moderate candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in the 2009 disputed election that secured President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s return to power.
Western security sources said in January Mr Mohammadi had worked closely with Mr Abbasi-Davani. “There is a long history of western intelligence agencies and Israeli intelligence agencies trying to take out people in clandestine programmes in that part of the world,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. – (Reuters)