Iran’s state-run media has accused Israel and the United States of masterminding the assassination of its nuclear scientist with a remote controlled device attached to explosives planted on a stationary motorcycle.
Iran’s state-run Press TV reported that Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, who lectured on neuron physics at Tehran University, was killed in a booby-trapped motorbike blast on Tuesday. The motorcycle was parked next to the scientist’s car near his home in northern Tehran. The bomb apparently went off as Mr. Mohammadi was getting into his car.
Press TV, quoting officials, said the equipment used and the configuration of the system suggested that the explosion was the handiwork of foreign intelligence agencies, particularly Israel’s Mossad.
Earlier, state television Irib said “anti-revolutionary and arrogant powers’ elements” were responsible for the assassination.
Iran uses the term “arrogant powers” in reference of to the United States and its closest allies.
The official news agency, IRNA, described Mr. Mohammadi as a “committed revolutionary professor at the Physics Faculty of Tehran University.”
Press TV said “kidnap and assassination of Iranian scientists is on the agenda of the United States.” It pointed to the mysterious disappearance earlier of Shahram Amiri, another Iranian nuclear scientist.
Mr. Amiri went missing while on pilgrimage in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in June 2009. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said on record in December that Tehran had information that Saudi authorities had handed over the scientist to the United States. Mr. Amiri is among 11 Iranian nationals that the U.S. authorities have detained in their prisons, the spokesman said.
