Monday, November 29, 2010

Nuclear Scientists Killed and Wounded – Iran Accuses Israel and the West

Iran has accused Israel and the West of being behind a pair of bomb attacks that killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another on the streets of Tehran on Monday.

Assailants on motorcycles attached magnetized bombs to the cars of the two nuclear scientists as they were driving in separate parts of the Iranian capital.

Majid Shahriari, the scientist killed in the attacks, was involved in a major project with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said the AEOI director. Mr. Shahriari was a professor of physics at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran.

The wounded scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, was on the list of 2007 UN sanctions resolution for his work on Iranian nuclear programs. Mr. Abbasi is also a physics professor at Shahid Beheshti University.

"Undoubtedly, the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved in the assassination," the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said after the attacks.

The attackers have not been yet apprehended or identified and Ahmadinejad did not provide any details on their links to Israel and the West.

Ahmadinejad also accused the West of creating problems for the country’s uranium enrichment program.

"They managed to create problems for a limited number of our centrifuges through the software installed on electronic parts. But this (virus) was discovered and the problem was resolved," Ahmadinejad told reporters.

Photos: Shahr.ir/ Donya-e Eqtesad

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

US/Zionist fingerprints all over and no big surprise as the attack has come on the same day as the "Wikileaks" farce. What is surprising is why Iran is not doing a better job at protecting important academics and scientists.

The vital people should have armored cars and personal bodyguards with protection at home as well. The undeclared war against Iran is about to get worse as the "Wikileaks" focus on Iranophobia makes quite clear.

Amir Taheri said...

All the targeted people have been professors and not scientist working at secret labs. While I agree that they need further protection, it must be difficult to have body guards for all science related professors in Iran. Remember the last professor to have been killed was a physicist.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Taheri, I totally agree that protecting such a large community of academics and professors is difficult, but the terrorists conducting these targeted murders of Iranian scientific community are operating with a pretty substantive organizational infrastructure which includes ready access to military grade explosives,target tracking and transportation. It is quite obvious that they have foreign support and logistics. Perhaps, even "diplomatic" support via some of the western embassies mentioned in the Wikileaks psy-ops "leaks".

The magnetic military grade nature of these complex explosive devices used on soft-skinned cars points to professional hits and preparation including extensive target surveillance by the terrorists.

Iran needs to tighten surveillance of these "diplomats", foreign "journalists", "businessmen" and assorted spies. The logistical bases of these terror groups and foreign assassins should be easy to locate and destroy. Iran needs to increase its counter-intelligence and counter-terror capabilities with a public awarenes campaign. The internal political divisive tactics of the color coded political dissent are also part of the Iran destabilization agenda. Iranians need unity at this critical juncture of national history to expose these plots and eliminate these terror cells.

Anonymous said...

Covert actions are working in Iran. When you have a dictator as president who continues to make public statements about wiping countries off the map and who at the same time is trying to build nukes in secret, then you take action. Any country would do the same if they were verbally threatened of annihilation on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, this is the game Amadinjad has decided to play.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't help that he was Iran's top stuxnet expert...

Anonymous said...

Before you go and blame Zionists and the US for everything, you should take a look at Jundallah as well. There are literally millions apart from the US and Israel who would love to see the terrorist dictator Amadinejad fail.

Anonymous said...

Aren't they two in the same?

Anonymous said...

@ November 29, 2010 10:10 PM

Don't get carried away with naive US/Zionist propaganda which no one in the region believes, Iran is neither a dictatoship or a threat to anyone. In fact Ahmadinejad is far from a "dictator" considering the robust Iranian civil society and pluralistic and often confusing power centres based on diffused political spheres and checks and balances at Majlis (Parliament). Even according to US analysis at the University of Maryland and PEW organizations post the June 2009 elections, Ahmadinejad won around 64% of the popular vote. Let's stick with facts and reality and not wild disinformation.

Anonymous said...

State sponsore of terrorism.

USA gives the gun and Israel pulls the trigger.

call it targeted assassinations and etc.

Iran must retaliate... there are enough Israelis running around, like dogs in a Park.

Anonymous said...

2:15 Stop making up your own propaganda.

Anonymous said...

Interesting Israeli perspective in the Independent:

Yossi Melman: Mossad, MI6, the CIA and the case of the assassinated scientist.

Three events – not seemingly related – took place yesterday. The leaking of State Department documents, many of which deal with the world's concerns about Iran's nuclear programme; the mysterious assassination in Tehran of a top Iranian nuclear scientist and the wounding of another, and the appointment of Tamir Pardo as the new head of Mossad, Israel's foreign espionage agency.


But there's a link between them. They are part of the endless efforts by the Israeli intelligence community, together with its Western counterparts including Britain's MI6 and America's CIA, to sabotage, delay and if possible, to stop Iran from reaching its goal of having its first nuclear bomb.

The attack on the two scientists, one of them mentioned as a top nuclear scientist working with Iran's Ministry of Defence, was part of these efforts. No organisation claimed responsibility but it is obvious, not just because of accusations by Iranian officials and Iran's media, that Israel was behind it. Most experts who follow Middle East politics and Mossad history would agree.

It is at least the fourth attempt to assassinate Iranian scientists linked with the country's nuclear programme in four years. There were probably other attempts which did not hit the headlines. The attribution to Mossad is not because of the use of motorcycles, though in the past Mossad has been involved in similar operations. The best known one was in 1995 in Valletta, Malta, when a Mossad hit-team liquidated Dr Fathi Shkaki, the leader of the Islamic Jihad.

It has more to do with the policy of Mossad to deal a blow to Iran's nuclear programme. On top of assassinating nuclear scientists to terrorise others and force some to quit, it is believed that Mossad was also behind penetrating Iranian purchasing networks and selling them flawed equipment of its nuclear enrichment centrifuges and most recently by planting a virus which has damaged the nuclear computers at Natanz.

Yet despite these daring ploys, it is obvious to Israeli decision-makers as well as to western leaders that if a country is determined enough to develop nuclear weapons nothing would stop it.

Yossi Melman is a senior commentator for the Israeli daily 'Haaretz' who specialises in strategic issues, terrorism and intelligence

Anonymous said...

6:00 You are *ss backwards like the rest of you who follow Amadinejad. Your calling the wrong people terrorists when Amadinejad is the one to blame for the killing of these scientists and the ones to come. Amadinejad is the worlds largest supporter of terrorism apart from Bin Laden. After seeing what happens when scum like Kim Jung gets bombs, sells it to other terrorists like the regimes in Iran and throughout the middle east and bullies it's neighbors like S Korea, there is no way the world will let demon possessed filth like Amadinejad who is worse than Kim Jung succeed... and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will prove this.

Anonymous said...

Actually the people in Iran are better off than the people in North Korea... but not by much.

Anonymous said...

@ typical ignorant hasbara Zio-nazi Iranophobic nonsense. The fact remains that the Zionist entity is the biggest cancer in the region. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the elected President of Iran and I serioulsy doubt that your rant has naything to do with a lucid mental state. It is interesting to note that there is not a single "wikileak" on Zionist atrocities in the region and beyond.

Anonymous said...

12:16 Sorry, wrong again. Amadinejad elected himself. I find it interesting that all of Amadinejad's neighbors would love to see him fail, or just die, not just Israel, the US and most civilized countries in the world.

Anonymous said...

civilized countries dont hunt and kill scientists.
Civilized countries dont set up concentation camps snd starve them like in Gaza
Ciuvilized countries dont disallow sale of land and housings to non jews in so called parliamentary democracies (actually rotating authocracies)
civilized countries dont kill seamen who only try to feed others
civilized countries dont start more wars in 50 years than most countries in a millenium
civilized countries ....

i got better things to do than talk to an arse like the last anon..

Dariush London