DUSHANBE, January 11, 2012, Asia-Plus — A university lecturer and nuclear scientist was killed on Wednesday in a car explosion in north Tehran, reports say.
Iranian media sources named the casualty as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Iran”s Fars News Agency (FNA) says the blast happened after a motorcyclist stuck an apparent bomb to the car.
The Iranian authorities blamed the car bomb assassination on Israel that threatens to ignite a dangerously tense international standoff over Iran”s atomic program.
Iran”s Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told state television that the attack against Mr. Ahmadi-Roshan would not stop “progress” in the country”s nuclear program. He called the killing “evidence of [foreign] government-sponsored terrorism.”
Iranian media sources said the blast took place at a faculty of Iran”s Allameh Tabatai University. Two others were reportedly also injured in the blast, which took place near Gol Nabi Street, in the north of Tehran.
The BBC reports Mr. Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was a graduate of Sharif University and supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, semi-official news agency Fars reported.
“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and the work of the Zionists [Israelis],” deputy Tehran governor Safarali Baratloo said.
Witnesses said they had seen two people on the motorbike fix the bomb to the car, reported to be a Peugeot 405. Another person in the car was reported to have been seriously injured though the car itself remained virtually intact.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US. Both countries deny the accusations.
According to the BBC, the latest attack comes almost two years to the day since Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a 50-year-old university lecturer at Tehran University, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb as he left his home in Tehran on January 12, 2010. Reports at the time described Dr. Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist, but it later appeared that he was an expert in another branch of physics.
There was also confusion as to whether the attack had any domestic political overtones because of reports about his apparent links to an opposition presidential candidate.
However, in August 2011, an Iranian man – Majid Jamali Fashi – was sentenced to death for the killing, with state authorities saying he was paid by Israel”s Mossad spy agency. Israel does not comment on such claims.
Of the latest attack, FNA reports that the bombing method appears similar to another 2010 bombing which injured former university professor Fereydun Abbasi-Davani, now the head of the country”s atomic energy organization.
There has been much controversy over Iran”s nuclear activities.
Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes, but the US and other Western nations suspect it of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
