Iran blames Israel for murder of scientist

IRAN said Israel was behind the murder of one of its nuclear scientists, who was killed by a magnet bomb fixed to his car by a motorcyclist.

The bombing, which Iranian officials said bore all the hallmarks of assassinations of other nuclear scientists in the past years, came as Washington sought to persuade a sceptical China to help efforts to toughen sanctions against Iran.

Iran has blamed Israeli, British and US intelligence for the attacks in the past, which it said were aimed at assassinating key people working on Iran’s nuclear programme. Both Israel and the US have rejected the claims.

“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists,” Tehran deputy governor Safarali Baratlou told the semi-official Fars news agency, referring to Israel.

“Iran’s enemies should know they cannot prevent Iran’s progress by carrying out such terrorist acts,” state news agency IRNA quoted first vice-president Mohammad Reza Rahimi as saying.

Heightened tensions over the nuclear programme, which major oil producer Iran insists is purely for civilian use but Western powers suspect has military goals, have driven oil prices higher, with Brent crude up more than 5% since the start of the year to above $113 a barrel.

The EU has brought forward to January 23 a ministerial meeting that is likely to confirm an embargo on oil purchases, and big importers of Iranian oil are moving to secure alternative supplies.

Iran is the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ second biggest exporter.

The victim was a nuclear scientist who “supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility,” Fars said.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation confirmed chemistry engineer Mostafa Ahmadi-roshan was part of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme and vowed not to be deflected from its development of nuclear technology. “America and Israel’s heinous act will not change the course of the Iranian nation,” it said.

Witnesses said they saw two people on a motorcycle fix the bomb to the car. As well as the person killed in the car, a pedestrian was also killed. Another person in the car was gravely injured.

Other Iranian media also reported the death but there were differing accounts of the killing.

Two daylight bomb attacks on the same day in Tehran in November 2010 killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another. Physics lecturer Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in January 2010 when a bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded near his car in Tehran.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for yesterday’s attack.

An oil embargo on Iran is now a clear option for the EU as preparations are afoot to provide alternative energy sources for the countries that would be affected, the EU Danish presidency has indicated.

But Danish foreign affairs minister Villy Soevndal played down talk of military action against Iran.