| Iran Nuclear Scientist Shot Dead in Tehran |
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By The Associated Press The wife of the scientist was wounded in the attack and rushed to a hospital for treatment, Mehr reported, quoting a police official. Despite UN and other sanctions, Iran has steadily moved ahead with its uranium enrichment work, the central aspect of its nuclear program and the process that is of deepest concern to the West because it can be used both to produce reactor fuel and material for nuclear warheads. Iran insists it is only after reactor fuel, but the UN's nuclear watchdog agency has accused Iran of stalling its investigation into the work for years. Rezaei's expertise - neutron transport - lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs. In November, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in different parts of Tehran killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the U.S. and Israel. In those attacks, assailants on motorcycles attached magnetized bombs to the cars of two scientists as they drove to work. They detonated seconds later. The man who survived that attack, Fereidoun Abbasi, is on a list of figures suspected of links to secret nuclear activities in a 2007 UN sanctions resolution, which put a travel ban and asset freeze on those listed. Abbasi has since been named one of Iran's vice presidents and head of its nuclear agency. The scientist killed in that attack had the same area of expertise as Rezaei. At least two other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in recent years. Iran's foreign minister said earlier this month that his country was ready to cooperate more closely with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency but only if it ends its investigation into allegations that Iran has secretly worked on a nuclear weapons program - a condition rejected by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog. Iran argues it has cooperated and answered all questions mandated by the plan governing the agency's probe. |
According to Iranian media reports, assailants on a motorcycle killed a 35-year-old Iranian nuclear physicist outside his home and wounded his wife.
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