Iran blames US and Israel for killing of nuclear scientist in Tehran

29 November 2010

In two separate attacks in Iran's capital on Monday, a senior Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and another wounded when their cars exploded. The Iranian regime swiftly blamed the intelligence services of the United States and Israel, the CIA and the Mossad, for the attacks, which were reportedly carried out by men on motorcycles. Slain scientist Majid Shahriari and Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, who survived the attack, were senior figures in Iran's nuclear program.

Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia said the scientists were targeted on their way to work in two different parts of the capital by men on motorcycles who attached bombs to their cars. Iran's presidential office and interior minister immediately accused the CIA and the Mossad of killing the two who were also professors at Tehran's prestigious Shahid Beheshti University. "The Zionist regime this time shed the blood of university professor Dr. Majid Shahriari to curb Iran's progress," the office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted on its website.

Shahriari was "in charge of one of the great projects" at Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, the Iran’s nuclear chief, Vice-President Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. Shahriari was also a member of the so-called SESAME project on nuclear cooperation in the Middle East. The wounded scientist, Abbasi Davani, was targeted identified as a senior scientist for the Iranian Ministry of in UN Security Council Resolution 1747, adopted in March 2007. The 52-year-old was "one of the few specialists who can separate isotopes," and has been a member of the elite Revolutionary Guard since the 1979 Islamic revolution, a report said.

In January, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, another Iranian nuclear scientist involved with SESAME, was killed in a bomb attack which Tehran. The attacks against the two men came after US diplomatic cables which the whistleblower website Wikileaks released on Sunday revealed that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah "repeatedly" urged Washington to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program." In a statement on Monday, Ahmadinejad that the leaking of the diplomatic reports were "organized" by the US to stir "mischief" against Iran.

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