Iranian Scientist Assassinated in Tehran
Blast in Tehran
A university lecturer and nuclear scientist was killed on Wednesday in the streets of Tehran as the car he was in exploded. The Iranian state media named him Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, and said he was working at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
According to the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars, the blast occurred as a motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb on the car. The blast happened at a faculty of Allameh Tabatai university, and two other people were injured in the process.
Over the past few years a few Iranian scientists were killed in similar accidents, causing Iran to accuse Israel and the United States of being behind them. Both countries denied any implication in them.
Deputy Tehran governor said that the type of magnetic bomb that killed Ahmadi-Roshan was used in other cases of assassination of Iranian scientist, and added that this was the work of the “Zionists.”
The attack comes two years after Massoud Ali Mohammadi, another scientist and lecturer at Tehran university, was killed by the remote detonation of a bomb as he was leaving home. Mohammadi proved to have had nothing in common with nuclear physics, and it was considered that he may have been taken out because of domestic political disagreements.
Nevertheless, in August 2011, a man was sentenced to death for the implication in killing the university professor. He was considered on the payroll of Israel’s Mossad. Israel made no comment on the subject.
The assassination in Tehran comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Monday that Iran had a new uranium enrichment facility in an undisclosed plant.
This prompted the United States, the European Union and Japan to want to impose further sanctions against Tehran, in hopes that they will cripple the Iranian economy, creating a popular dissatisfaction with the regime in the process.
Judging by the defiant tone of the ayatollah Khamenei, it would seem that the sanctions have no effect on the Iranian program, since it goes on undeterred. Even so, the national currency started to loss against the euro, reaching 20 percent last week.
The most serious of the measures against Iran was signed into law by the American president Barack Obama, making it impossible for foreign powers to deal with the central bank of Iran without prejudicing their relations with Washington.
Japan is preparing for a oil embargo by acquiring the supplies of oil from the Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The European Union finance minister are expected to gather later this month to impose an embargo on oil imports from Iran.
China warned that the escalation of this crisis could cause a reaction that would prejudice the entire world, as Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, causing the price of oil to go over the roof.
American Treasury Secretary is touring China and Japan, and in Beijing demanded that China join the efforts for nuclear non-proliferation. China insists that the United States and the European Union should not impose sanctions beyond the resolutions of the United Nations.
