Iran's bombAnother Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran
On Saturday, Darioush Rezaei, a 35-year-old physics professor involved in Iran’s nuclear program, was killed outside is Tehran home by assailants on a motorcycle; Rezaei’s expertise — neutron transport — is at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs; Rezaei joins an ever-growing list of Iranian nuclear scientists who have met an untimely death at the hands of mysterious assailants; the systematic, covert killing of nuclear scientists to prevent a country from building a bomb is a method Israel used successfully — if, at times, with collateral damage — against Egypt in the early 1960s and against Iraq in the 1980s; the precision and lethality of the current Israeli campaign against Iran’s nuclear weapons scientists shows Israel learned important operational lessons from those two campaigns
Video capture of Darioush Rezaei, Iranian neutron transport physicist // Source: uma.ac.ir
Israel’s methodical, patient campaign to derail Iran’s nuclear weapons program continues. One element of this covert campaign is the systematic killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. This weekend, one more nuclear scientist was summarily dispatched.
Darioush Rezaei, a 35-year-old physics professor involved in Iran’s nuclear program, was killed Saturday outside is Tehran home by assailants on a motorcycle. Rezaei’s wife, who stood next to him, was injured in the attack.
The killing bore similarities to other slayings of scientists involved in the country’s nuclear work in recent years. Haaretz reports that several Iranian nuclear scientists have been murdered in recent years in attacks that Iran has blamed on the United States and Israel. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency also identified the victim of Saturday’s attack as a professor of physics who was involved in the nuclear program. Haaretz notes that Rezaei’s expertise — neutron transport — is 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 In the 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.
After the attack, Abbasi has been promoted to the position of one of Iran’s vice presidents and head of its nuclear agency.
The scientist killed in the November attack had the same area of expertise as Rezaei. At least two other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in recent years.
