Iran on Sunday accused arch-foes the United States and Israel of masterminding the assassination of a scientist in Tehran, Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, who was reportedly associated with the defence ministry.“The American-Zionist terrorist act yesterday against one of the country’s scientists is yet another sign of the Americans’ degree of animosity,” speaker Ali Larijani told parliament on Sunday.
“America must think carefully about the consequences of such actions,” he said, urging Iran’s security forces to give a “stronger response to such evil moves.”Assailants riding a motorcycle shot dead Rezaei-Nejad, 35, in the capital on Saturday evening, according to the Iranian media which originally reported he was a nuclear scientist working for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.
But on Sunday, the media stopped referring to him as a nuclear expert without giving an explanation, and presented him as an “electronics master’s student” at Tehran’s Khajeh Nassir University. The Fars news agency suggested that the media had made a mistake in reporting Rezaei-Nejad’s speciality, and insisted that he had links with the defence ministry, without giving details.
But higher education deputy minister Mohammad Mehdinejad Nouri told the Mehr news agency that the victim “was not a member of the defence ministry” and suggested that he may have collaborated on a project the ministry contracted to Khajeh Nassir University.According to reports on Sunday, Rezaei-Nejad was shot five times by unknown assailants as he and his wife were waiting for their child in front of a kindergarten in Tehran.
His wife was injured in the attack.Several Iranian nuclear scientists have disappeared in recent years or been targeted in attacks the Islamic republic has blamed on the United States and Israel, which suspect Tehran’s atomic programme masks a nuclear weapons drive. Tehran denies the charges, insisting that its atomic programme is entirely peaceful.