TEHRAN, Jan 16, (AFP): Iran has made arrests over a scientist’s assassination last week blamed on Israel and the US, parliament speaker Ali Larijani said Monday, vowing his country would avenge the death using “non-terrorist” tactics.
He did not specify how many people were arrested or when the arrests were made, or give any details on the suspects’ identities or nationalities.
“We have discovered some clues and some arrests have been made. Investigations are ongoing,” Larijani told Iran’s Arabic-language broadcaster Al-Alam.
Various Iranian officials have blamed Israel and the United States for the Jan 11 killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year-old deputy director of Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant.
Ahmadi Roshan died along with his driver after assassins on a motorbike fixed a magnetic bomb to his car.
It was the fifth such attack targeting Iran’s scientists in the past two years. Four other scientists — three of them involved in Iran’s nuclear programme — died in the attacks, while one managed to escape.
Iranian military commanders have said they are looking at “punishing” those responsible.
But Larijani said Iran would not resort to terrorism to take its revenge.
“We will not hesitate in punishing the Zionist regime (Israel) so that it realises such actions have clear responses. There will definitely be a response but our action will be of a non-terrorist nature,” he said.
On Saturday, the deputy chief of Iran’s joint armed forces, Masoud Jazayeri, said Iran was mulling a response to hold the US, Israel and Britain “accountable” for their perceived involvement in the attacks.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday blamed the US and Israeli intelligence services for the latest killing.
He said Iran would “continue with determination” its nuclear activities, which Western governments suspect mask a drive for a weapons capability despite Tehran’s repeated denials.
Washington has issued strongly worded denials of any role in the murders. Israel, widely seen as the prime suspect, has neither denied nor confirmed involvement, in line with its policy of not commenting on intelligence matters.
Israel’s foreign minister called Monday for tough sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and its oil and gas industry to “suffocate” Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but did not rule out military action.
“I don’t speak about any military preparations, I think until today it’s enough with tough sanctions to suffocate these Iranian ambitions, but we keep all options on the table,” Avigdor Lieberman told reporters in Warsaw at a joint press conference with Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski.
Lieberman further urged “restrictions and sanctions against their central bank and sanctions against their oil and gas industry, including drilling and their refineries and everything that is connected to their oil and gas production.”
The foreign minister’s comments echo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Monday statement that existing US and EU sanctions against Iran fall short of forcing Tehran to halt its nuclear programme.
Both Israel and United States are seeking tough new international sanctions on Tehran, particularly on its oil exports and financial institutions.
Iran has responded by threatening to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, key to global oil exports from Arabian Gulf states.
Lieberman also pointed to what he termed Tehran’s “involvement in terrorist activity around the world” including South America, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
The current regime of US and EU sanctions against Iran is not enough to force Tehran to halt its nuclear programme, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Although Western sanctions against the Islamic republic have been stepped up, Israel remains sceptical that Tehran will abandon its nuclear programme without harsh steps against its oil-based economy and its banking sector.
“As long as there won’t be real and effective sanctions against Iran’s petroleum industry and central bank, there will be no real effect on Iran’s nuclear programme,” Netanyahu told MPs at a parliamentary committee, with his remarks transmitted by a spokesman.
“The current sanctions employed against Iran harm the Iranians, but not in a way that could bring to a halt in the country’s nuclear programme,” he said.
“Without significant sanctions on the central bank and petroleum exports, Iran will continue to advance its nuclear plans.”
Israel has made no secret of its desire to see crippling sanctions in a bid to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, which world powers believe masks a weapons drive but which Tehran insists is for civilian energy and medical purposes alone.
Iran has repeatedly violated a UN arms embargo with exports to protest-hit Syria, the French foreign ministry said on Monday, citing a UN group of experts.
“The UN panel of experts on Iran has identified and informed the Security Council of several violations of the embargo on arms to or from Iran set up by... the United Nations Security Council,” said spokesman Romain Nadal.
“These arms deliveries are illegal and deeply shocking because they benefit a regime that has chosen a kind of repression that the UN rights council has repeatedly said constitutes ‘crimes against humanity’,” he said.
“We condemn these violations and call on Iran and Syria to comply with Security Council resolutions,” Nadal said in response to a question about a US accusation that Tehran was sending arms to Damascus.
Senior US officials told AFP on Friday that Iran was supplying munitions to aid Syria’s bloody protest crackdown in an initiative spearheaded by the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds force, Qasem Soleimani.
Advisor
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s media advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, has been found guilty by a Tehran court of insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but on Monday fought back against the charge.
“My adherence to the sage supreme leader is more apparent than the sun, and is backed by my record,” Javanfekr wrote on his personal website, Javanfekr.ir.
He said he would appeal the verdict, which was delivered on Sunday by a Revolutionary Court.
The court sentenced Javanfekr to a year in prison and a five-year ban on media and political activities for references he made to Khamenei on his website in April 2011.
“I expect the judges to be fair and overturn the sentence in the appeals process,” he wrote.
The conviction marks another legal twist for Javanfekr, who also runs Iran’s official IRNA news agency and a state press group that prints several newspapers and magazines.