The Iranian regime has accused Israel and the United States of perpetrating a bomb attack in northern Tehran in which a senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, was killed on Monday. "One can see in preliminary investigations signs of the triangle of evil of the Zionist regime, America and their mercenaries in Iran in this terrorist incident," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters immediately after the blast. "Such terrorist acts and the physical elimination of the country's nuclear scientists will certainly not stop the scientific and technological process but will speed it up," he added.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also blamed the West. "Kidnapping and assassination are scenarios of a joint conspiracy against the nation of Iran," he said according to the ‘Fars’ news agency. "On the one hand, the espionage and intelligence agents of the American government kidnap a number of Iranian nationals in third-party countries and transfer them to America, and on the other hand, their treasonous agents inside Iran assassinate an intellectual citizen."
Iranian Prosecutor-General Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said: "Given the fact that Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist, the CIA and Mossad services and agents most likely have had a hand in it.” US State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied the charge and called the Iranian accusations "absurd." Israeli officials did not comment.
While pro-regime media said the scholar had been a supporter of the government reformist websites in Iran accused hard-liners in the regime of killing Ali Mohammadi as a means of spreading fear on restive campuses that have become hotbeds of anti-government activity.
Meanwhile, the ‘Washington Post’ reported that Ali Mohammadi was part of a regional research project based in Jordan and operating under United Nations auspices and was acquainted with Israeli scientists also involved in this project.
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