Blast kills Iran nuclear expert amid ‘covert war’

ALI AKBAR DAREINI

BRIAN MURPHY

Asso­ci­ated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — It seemed a clock­work killing: Motor­cy­cle rid­ers flashed by and attached a mag­netic bomb onto a car car­ry­ing a nuclear sci­en­tist work­ing at Iran’s main ura­nium enrich­ment facil­ity. By the time the blast tore apart the sil­ver Peu­geot, the bike was blocks away, weav­ing through Tehran traf­fic after what Iran calls the lat­est strike in an esca­lat­ing covert war.

The attack — which instantly killed the sci­en­tist and fatally wounded his dri­ver on Wednes­day — was at least the fourth tar­geted hit against a mem­ber of Iran’s nuclear brain trust in two years. Tehran quickly blamed Israeli-linked agents backed by the U.S. and Britain.

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton denied any U.S. role in the slay­ing, and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion con­demned the attack. How­ever, provoca­tive hints from Jerusalem rein­forced the per­cep­tion of an orga­nized and clan­des­tine cam­paign to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The day before the attack, Israeli mil­i­tary chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a par­lia­men­tary panel that 2012 would be a “crit­i­cal year” for Iran — in part because of “things that hap­pen to it unnaturally.”

The blast killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chem­istry expert and a direc­tor of the Natanz ura­nium enrich­ment facil­ity, the cen­ter­piece of Iran’s expand­ing pro­gram to make nuclear fuel. Roshan, 32, had planned to attend a memo­r­ial later Wednes­day for another nuclear researcher who was killed in a sim­i­lar pin­point blast two years ago, Iran­ian media said.

“A heinous act,” said Iran’s Atomic Energy Orga­ni­za­tion of Wednesday’s bombing.

It added a tone of defi­ance. “We will con­tinue our (nuclear) path with­out any doubt … Our path is irre­versible,” said the state­ment car­ried on state television.

The state news agency IRNA said Roshan had “orga­ni­za­tional links” to Iran’s nuclear agency, which sug­gests a direct role in key aspects of the pro­gram. Another news agency, the semi­of­fi­cial Mehr, said Roshan had been inter­viewed by inspec­tors from the U.N. nuclear watch­dog agency — which Iran has accused of plac­ing its sci­en­tists in peril by includ­ing their names in pub­lic reports.

Natanz, in cen­tral Iran, is the country’s main enrich­ment site. Offi­cials said this week they were expand­ing some oper­a­tions to an under­ground site south of Tehran with more advanced equipment.

The U.S. and its allies are pres­sur­ing Iran to halt ura­nium enrich­ment, a key ele­ment of the nuclear pro­gram that the West sus­pects is aimed at pro­duc­ing atomic weapons. Ura­nium enriched to low lev­els can be used as nuclear fuel, but at higher lev­els it can be used as mate­r­ial for a nuclear warhead.

Iran denies it is try­ing to make nuclear weapons, say­ing its pro­gram is for peace­ful pur­poses only and is geared toward gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­ity and pro­duc­ing med­ical radioiso­topes to treat can­cer patients.

The years of vir­tual stale­mate between Iran and the West appear to be shift­ing into a new period of height­ened pres­sures and tensions.

Rus­sia strongly warned the West on Wednes­day against any attack on Iran, say­ing it would upset global security.

Mil­i­tary action would be a “grave mis­take, a fla­grant error” with far-reaching con­se­quences for regional and global sta­bil­ity, Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Ryabkov told the ITAR-Tass news agency. “It could shake the foun­da­tions of the inter­na­tional system.”

Tehran has accused Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s spy agency of engag­ing in an under­ground “ter­ror­ism” cam­paign against nuclear-related tar­gets, includ­ing at least three other slay­ings since early 2010 and the release of a mali­cious com­puter virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that dis­rupted con­trols of some cen­trifuges — a com­po­nent in nuclear fuel pro­duc­tion. All three coun­tries have denied the Iran­ian accusations.

Speak­ing in Wash­ing­ton, Clin­ton strongly denied any U.S. role in the lat­est attack.

“I want to cat­e­gor­i­cally deny any United States involve­ment in any kind of act of vio­lence inside Iran,” she said. “We believe there has to be an under­stand­ing between Iran, its neigh­bors and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity that finds a way for­ward for it to end its provoca­tive behav­ior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity and be a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of it.”

Israeli offi­cials, how­ever, hinted at covert cam­paigns against Iran with­out directly admit­ting involvement.

“Many bad things have been hap­pen­ing to Iran in the recent period,” said Mickey Segal, a for­mer direc­tor of the Israeli military’s Iran­ian intel­li­gence depart­ment. “Iran is in a sit­u­a­tion where pres­sure on it is mount­ing, and the lat­est assas­si­na­tion joins the pres­sure that the Iran­ian regime is facing.”

Iran­ian author­i­ties pointed the fin­ger at arch-foe Israel.

First Vice Pres­i­dent Moham­mad Reza Rahimi said Israeli agents were behind the assas­si­na­tion, but can­not “pre­vent progress” in what Iran claims are peace­ful nuclear efforts.

Roshan was inside the Peu­geot 405 together with two oth­ers when the bomb exploded near Gol Nabi Street in north Tehran, Fars reported. It said Roshan’s dri­ver later died at a hos­pi­tal from wounds sus­tained in the attack. An 85-year old passer-by was report­edly wounded in the blast.

Fars described the explo­sion as a “ter­ror­ist attack” tar­get­ing Roshan, a grad­u­ate of the pres­ti­gious Sharif Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy in Tehran. Police draped the bomb-ravaged car with a blue tarp and hosed blood from the pave­ment. Some bits of the vehi­cle were hurled into the bare branches of trees.

Roshan was a chem­istry expert who was involved in build­ing poly­meric lay­ers for gas sep­a­ra­tion, which is the use of var­i­ous mem­branes to iso­late gases. He was also deputy direc­tor of com­mer­cial affairs for the Natanz ura­nium enrich­ment plant in cen­tral Iran. Accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive news web­site mashreghnews.ir, Roshan was in charge of pur­chas­ing and sup­ply­ing equip­ment for the facility.

Natanz remains the main­stay of Iran’s ura­nium labs. But Iran said this week it was expand­ing some oper­a­tions to a bunker-like site south of Tehran pro­tected under 300 feet (90 meters) of rock. The exis­tence of the Fordo facil­ity has been known for more than two years, but some West­ern offi­cials fear the move could be another step toward devel­op­ing nuclear arms.

The con­ser­v­a­tive news web­site, alef.ir, posted sev­eral papers to which Roshan con­tributed. It said his spe­cialty, poly­meric lay­ers, has uses in ura­nium enrich­ment by hav­ing ura­nium gas pass through fil­ter­ing membranes.

Since Decem­ber, Iran has held or announced a series of war games that included threats to close the Gulf’s vital Strait of Hor­muz — the pas­sage­way for about one-sixth of the world’s oil — in retal­i­a­tion for stronger U.S.-led sanctions.

“Assas­si­na­tions, mil­i­tary threats and polit­i­cal pres­sures … The enemy insists on the tac­tic of cre­at­ing fear to stop Iran’s peace­ful nuclear activ­i­ties,” Fars quoted law­maker Javad Jahangirzadeh as say­ing in reac­tion to the blast.

A sim­i­lar bomb explo­sion on Jan. 12, 2010 killed Tehran Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor Masoud Ali Moham­madi, a senior physics pro­fes­sor. He died when a bomb-rigged motor­cy­cle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work.

In Novem­ber 2010, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in dif­fer­ent parts of the cap­i­tal killed another nuclear sci­en­tist and wounded one more.

The slain sci­en­tist, Majid Shahri­ari, was a mem­ber of the nuclear engi­neer­ing fac­ulty at Shahid Beheshti Uni­ver­sity in Tehran and coop­er­ated with the Atomic Energy Orga­ni­za­tion of Iran. The wounded sci­en­tist, Fer­ei­doun Abbasi, was almost imme­di­ately appointed head of Iran’s atomic agency.

Shahriari’s exper­tise — neu­tron trans­port — lies at the heart of nuclear chain reac­tions in reac­tors and bombs. And Abbasi, now Iran’s nuclear chief, has been described as a laser expert and one of the few top Iran­ian spe­cial­ists in nuclear iso­tope separation.

In July 2011, motorcycle-riding gun­men killed Dar­i­oush Reza­eine­jad, an elec­tron­ics stu­dent. Other reports iden­ti­fied him as a sci­en­tist involved in sus­pected Iran­ian attempts to make nuclear weapons.

Reza­eine­jad allegedly par­tic­i­pated in devel­op­ing high-voltage switches, a key com­po­nent in set­ting off the explo­sions needed to trig­ger a nuclear warhead.

“Instead of actu­ally fight­ing a con­ven­tional war, West­ern pow­ers and their allies appear to be rely­ing on covert war tac­tics to try to delay and degrade Iran’s nuclear advance­ment,” said Theodore Karasik, a secu­rity expert at the Dubai-based Insti­tute for Near East and Gulf Mil­i­tary Analysis.

Meir Javedan­far, an Iranian-born ana­lyst based in Israel, said Iran’s lead­er­ship is being pushed toward a deci­sion on whether to “retal­i­ate or com­pro­mise” as sanc­tions squeeze the econ­omy and under­cut the value of the Iran­ian rial.

“From the inter­na­tional con­sen­sus that we can see against Iran, even if (Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei) does retal­i­ate, it’s not very likely that the pres­sure — sanc­tions and iso­la­tion — would ease,” he said. “He’s in a tight spot.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.