Thursday, January 12, 2017

The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists

  • Alireza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister, vanished while visiting Turkey in 2006. He is believed to have defected to a foreign intelligence agency.

  • Ardeshir Hossein-Pour, a nuclear scientist who worked at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, died suddenly in 2007 at the age of 44. The official explanation was that he succumbed to "gas suffocation".

  • Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a professor of physics and nuclear energy at Tehran University, was killed when a remote-controlled bomb exploded outside his home in January 2010.

  • Shahram Amiri, a physicist who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Mecca in May 2009. He later turned up in the US, before returning to Iran in July 2010 where he disappeared again, probably into Iranian custody as a suspected defector.

  • Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, was killed on 29 November 2010 when attackers riding motorcycles attached a bomb to his car window. This became the modus operandi for three assassination attempts.

  • Fereydoun Abbasi, also a professor at Shahid Besheshti University, was wounded in an identical attack on same day. Three months later, he was promoted to become head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation.

  • Darioush Rezaei-Nejad, who was studying for a masters degree in electronics at Khajeh-Nasir Tousi University, was shot dead in Tehran in July 2011. Reports suggest he was a graduate of Malek-e-Ashtar University, which is affiliated to Iran's defence ministry.

  • General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the head of Iran's ballistic missile programme, was killed in an explosion at military base outside Tehran on 12 November 2011.

  • Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a chemist who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed by a bomb attached to his car window in Tehran on 11 January 2011.

  • In total, 5 Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed since 2007. Another has been wounded and one more has disappeared. In addition, the head of Iran's ballistic missile programme has been killed and a deputy defence minister disappeared.

Source Telegraph

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Shahram Amiri, a scapegoat