Assailants on a motorcycle assassinated an Iranian nuclear physicist on Saturday, Iranian media reports said, in a killing that bore similarities to other slayings of scientists involved in the country’s nuclear work in recent years.
The semi-official ISNA news agency identified the victim as Darioush Rezaei, a 35-year-old physics professor involved in Iran’s nuclear programme, and said he was killed in front of his home in Tehran.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been murdered in recent years in attacks that Iran has blamed on the US and Israel, which accuse Tehran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of its civilian atomic energy programme. Iran denies those accusations and says its programme has entirely peaceful aims. The semi-official Mehr news agency also identified the victim of Saturday’s attack as a professor of physics and said he was assassinated in front of his house in Bani Hashem street in Tehran. The wife of the scientist was wounded in the attack and rushed to a hospital for treatment, Mehr reported, quoting a police official. —AP