TEHRAN, July 23, (Agencies): Iranian nuclear scientist Dariush Rezaei was shot dead on Saturday when unknown assailants riding a motorcycle targeted him in the capital Tehran, local media reported.
“A physics professor and nuclear scientist was assassinated a few hours ago in front of his house in Tehran,” Mehr news agency reported at 1430 GMT.
The ISNA news agency identified the scientist as Dariush Rezaei, 35, an expert with links to the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI).
Mehr said his wife was also wounded in the shooting and rushed to hospital.
According to the agency, Rezaei studied nuclear engineering in Tehran’s Amir Kabir University and did research for the AEOI.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been murdered in recent years in attacks the Islamic republic has blamed on the United States and Israel, which suspect Iran’s atomic programme masks a drive for a weapons capability.
Last November 29, Majid Shahriari was killed in the capital when men on motorcycles attached a bomb to his car, while the current nuclear chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani survived a similar assassination attempt on the same day.
Abbasi Davani had been 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.
The PhD holder in nuclear physics is one of the few Iranian specialists who can separate isotopes and has been a member of the elite military force the Revolutionary Guards since the 1979 Islamic revolution, media reports say.
Another senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, was killed in a bomb attack on January 12, 2010, which Tehran blamed on “mercenaries” in the pay of the US and Israeli intelligence services.
Following the attacks, Tehran vowed to take measures to increase security for its nuclear scientists.
Iran is at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear programme, and the last round of talks between Tehran and the world powers broke down in Istanbul in January.
Iran is currently under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. Several countries, including the United States and the European Union, have also imposed other unilateral punitive measures against Tehran.
Iran, however, remains adamant that it will push ahead with its controversial enrichment activities, which can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the fissile material for an atomic warhead.
Tehran insists it will use the enriched uranium to fuel its future nuclear power plants, and that its atomic programme is entirely peaceful.
Nuclear chief Abbasi Davani, targeted by UN Security Council sanctions under Resolution 1747 adopted in March 2007, announced in June that Iran plans to triple its capacity to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity.
Research
Meanwhile, an Iranian opposition group said Friday that Tehran’s leaders have consolidated several scattered nuclear research efforts in a single new defense agency geared to streamline weapons development.
The Mujahedin-e Khalk, or MEK, told The Associated Press that Iran’s defense ministry established the new agency in March to merge various nuclear-related programs.
The State Department had no immediate comment on the report. Some of MEK’s past claims about Iran’s nuclear program have been confirmed, while others have not. But a former international nuclear inspector said Friday he has heard a similar report.
An MEK spokesman said the new agency, the Organization for New Defense Research is led by Moshen Fakhrizadeh, a physicist long suspected of running Iran’s secret nuclear projects.
The UN Security Council placed Fakhrizadeh under an asset freeze and travel ban after Iran refused to make him available to International Atomic Energy Agency investigators.
Iran has repeatedly said it is interested only in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology. The United States and many other countries believe Iran is laying the groundwork for building a bomb, though it is not clear if it has committed itself to doing so.
MEK spokesman Alireza Jafarzadeh said Iran’s clear goal is to join the club of nuclear weapons states. “This is a very advanced, sophisticated nuclear weapons program with all the necessary elements to build a nuclear weapon,” Jafarzadeh said.
Jafarzadeh said Iran has merged its secret nuclear programs because it believes it can continue to deny international inspectors access to sensitive sites and scientists like Fakhrizadeh.
“They have learned how to dodge the international community, how to obtain what they need using front companies,” Jafarzadeh said.
Olli Heinonen, the former International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director in charge of Iran, said that he has received similar information, although he was told that the new Iranian agency reports to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rather than the Ministry of Defense.
Reorganisation
Heinonen, now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, said he was told the reorganization was part of an effort by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, to remove President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the nuclear research effort’s chain of command.
According to an intelligence assessment shared with The Associated Press, Ahmadinejad wants to shed the nation’s secrecy and forge ahead openly with developing nuclear weapons. He is opposed by the clerical leadership, which is worried about international reaction to such a move. The assessment was produced by a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region.
Ahmadinejad is pushing “to shake free of the restraints Iran has imposed upon itself, and openly push forward to create a nuclear bomb,” says the assessment. But Khamenei, whose word is final on nuclear and other issues, “wants to progress using secret channels, due to concern about a severe response from the West,” says the report.
The MEK, which is dedicated to the overthrow of the regime in Tehran, is currently lobbying the Obama administration to be removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
The group committed a series of bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1970s and early 1980s, and fought on the side of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. But MEK says it renounced violence in 2001, and that its extensive network of sympathizers inside Iran produces valuable intelligence.
The group has built bipartisan support among many members of Congress and former senior US government officials, although it is regarded with skepticism by many diplomats and academic specialists. Some analysts suspect MEK has ties to Western intelligence services, but the group has denied this.
Jafarzadeh said the headquarters of Iran’s new nuclear organization, known by its Farsi acronym SPND, is located adjacent to the Malik Ashtar University of Technology in northeast Tehran.
The SPND’s six sections include a directorate as well as research labs for physics, metallurgy, chemistry, explosives and nuclear safety, he said.
The MEK spokesman said Iran’s nuclear organization evades sanctions and buys advanced technology — including devices that measure a person’s exposure to radiation and the triggers for nuclear weapons — through a variety of front companies.