Suspicious blast
January 11, 2012
An Iranian university professor with ties to the country's nuclear program was killed in a car bombing in Tehran on Wednesday, reports said, prompting Iranian officials to immediately blame Israel and the United States for the assassination.
Two assailants riding on a motorcycle reportedly attached a magnetic bomb to the car of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, named by state TV as a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. He was killed immediately, while his driver died of wounds in a hospital. A third passenger was seriously injured.
Officials were quick to point the finger at Israel and the United States, in light of similar assassinations of nuclear scientists in the past presumably meant to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Iran's atomic energy agency issued a statement saying "the futile actions by the criminal Israeli regime and America will not disrupt the path the Iranian people have chosen."
"The agents of the imperialistic powers have been involved in this assassination," Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said in a statement quoted by the ISNA news agency. "The enemies of Iran should know that with such terrorist acts, they cannot stop Iran's scientific progress."
Past assassinations
Two Iranian nuclear scientists, Majid Shahriari and Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, were killed in bomb attacks in 2010. A bombing targeting nuclear scientist Fereydoun Abbasi failed to kill him. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad almost immediately promoted him to head of Iran's atomic energy agency.
The United States denied any involvement in the killing. The State Department said it condemned "any assassination or attack on an innocent person and we express our sympathies to the family."
Hostility between Iran and the United States had already intensified on Monday, when an Iranian court sentenced to death an American citizen on charges of espionage.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on Monday that Iran had expanded its nuclear operations to the underground Fordo facility south of Tehran, protected by 300 feet (91 meters) of rock.
Author: Andrew Bowen (AP, AFP, dpa)
Editor: Michael Lawton