TEHRAN, Nov 29, (Agencies): A defiant Iran admitted Monday that its atomic programme may have come under cyber-attack as one of its top nuclear scientists was killed by a bomb attached to his car in the capital and another was wounded by a similar device. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the attacks against the two senior scientists in Iran’s controversial nuclear programme on Israel and Western powers led by the United States which accuse Iran of seeking to make atomic weapons. Majid Shahriari was killed and his colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani was injured when men on motorcycles attached bombs to their cars in different parts of the capital as they made their way to work, police said. Three others including the men’s wives and a driver were also injured.

“One can undoubtedly see the hands of the Zionist regime and Western governments in the assassination which unfortunately took place,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference. Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar blamed the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the CIA. Israel’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the reports. Shahriari was “in charge of one of the great projects” at Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi told the state news agency IRNA.

He was also a member of the so-called SESAME project on nuclear cooperation in the Middle East and conservative website Rajanews said he headed a “project that sought to achieve the technology to design nuclear reactor core.” The other scientist, Abbasi Davani, was targeted by UN Security Council sanctions under Resolution 1747 adopted in March 2007. He was identified as a senior defence ministry and armed forces logistics scientist. Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia said the assailants had managed to escape and that “nobody had yet claimed responsibility” for the attacks.

In January, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, another Iranian nuclear scientist involved with the SESAME project, was killed in a bomb attack which Tehran blamed on “mercenaries” in the pay of Israel and the United States. Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atom bomb. Western governments suspect Iran’s nuclear programme masks a drive for an atomic weapons capability, an ambition Tehran has steadfastly denied. The Islamic republic is likely to resume stalled negotiations with world powers on its controversial nuclear programme in Geneva on Dec 5.

But a defiant Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Iran’s “right to enrich uranium and produce (nuclear) fuel... is non-negotiable.” Despite previous denials by other Iranian officials, Ahmadinejad also admitted that “several” uranium enrichment centrifuges were damaged by malware amid speculation Iran’s nuclear activities had come under cyber-attack. “They were able to create problems on a limited basis for some of our centrifuges by software installed in electronic equipment,” Ahmadinejad said. “Our specialists stopped that and they will not be able to do it again,” he added without elaborating on the software thought to have been used. Computer security firm Symantec said this month that computer worm Stuxnet might have been designed to disrupt the motors that power gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium. While accusing opponents of seeking to sabotage the nuclear programme, Iranian officials have insisted that the atomic work has not been harmed by Stuxnet, and denied there was any halt in the enrichment work.

But the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, said in its latest report last week that a one-day outage had hit Iran’s Natanz enrichment nuclear plant earlier this month. Iran’s atomic chief warned “enemies” of the Islamic republic they were “playing with fire” after a prominent nuclear scientist was reportedly killed Monday in a bomb blast blamed on Israel. “Don’t play with fire. Iranians’ patience is limited and if their patience runs out, our enemies will have a bad fate,” Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. Salehi, a vice president of Iran and the head of its Atomic Energy Organisation, stopped short of naming any countries although state media have accused “Israeli agents” of carrying out the attack. “Dr (Majid) Shahriari was my student for years and he had good cooperation with the Atomic Energy Organisation. He was in charge of one of the great projects of the organisation,” he said. “We will boost the nuclear movement of the Iranian nation by several times,” he vowed.

Talks
Iran has accepted a date for talks with the major powers, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday, and the Islamic state’s envoy to Russia suggested they would take place in Geneva early next month.
The six powers hope the talks, for which a date of Dec 5 was previously mooted, will focus on its disputed nuclear programme, but Tehran has said its uranium enrichment activity will not be up for negotiation.
Western diplomats and analysts do not expect any breakthrough soon in the long-running dispute over Iranian nuclear work the West fears is aimed at developing bombs but which Tehran says is designed to generate electricity only.
“Two dates have been proposed, they accepted one of them and we do not have any problem with that,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference, adding that the venue was still under discussion.
In Moscow, the Ria News Agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Russia as saying the talks would be held on Dec 5 in Geneva. Iran had previously proposed Istanbul as its preferred venue.
“The time of the negotiations is set for Dec 5 and the site of the meeting will be Geneva, although we suggested Turkey,” RIA quoted Iran’s ambassador to Russia, Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi, as saying.
Enriched uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power plants but also provide material for bombs, if refined much further.
“The complete enrichment cycle and the production of fuel are basic rights of (IAEA, or UN nuclear watchdog) member states and are non-negotiable,” Ahmadinejad said.
The powers want Tehran to curb the programme in exchange for a package of trade and diplomatic benefits on offer since 2006.
“We will negotiate with each other about nuclear cooperation,” Ahmadinejad said. “We are now ready to talk about nuclear trade.”

Centrifuges
Enemies of Iran used computer code to make “limited” problems for centrifuges involved in uranium enrichment at some of its nuclear sites, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday.
“They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts,” he told reporters at a media conference.
“They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that and today they are not able (to do that) anymore,” he said.
In September Iran said that the Stuxnet computer virus, that experts said may have been created by a state, did not affect Iran’s nuclear plant or government systems but did hit computers of staff at the plant and Internet providers.
Stuxnet, a powerful example of the fastest-growing sort of computer bug — customised malware written specifically to attack a precise target, has attracted publicity through a presumed link to Iran.
The Islamic Republic has been experiencing years of problems with equipment used in its uranium enrichment programme and Stuxnet may be one of the factors, former top UN nuclear inspections official Olli Heinonen said on Nov 20.