Tehran, January 13: A senior Iranian lawmaker says the United States adopts a condolatory tone over the assassination of an Iranian scientist while the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played a conspicuous part in the killing of the scholar.
On January 11, an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to the car of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan near a college building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran. Ahmadi Roshan was immediately killed and his driver, who had sustained injuries, died a few hours later in a hospital.
Ahmadi Roshan was a chemical engineering graduate of the prominent Sharif University of Technology and served as the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.
The chairwoman of the Human Rights Committee of Iran’s Majlis, Zohreh Elahian, said on Thursday that the role of the British MI6, the CIA and Israel’s Mossad in terrorist acts against Iranian scientists is obvious.
She added that those who claim to advocate human rights carry out acts of terror wherever they seek to serve their own interests, but they later condemn terrorist attacks.
The Iranian legislator noted that certain representatives of the US Congress do not refrain from propping terrorist acts against Iran while some others openly support the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist.
She also warned that the silence of the United Nations and international circles on the terrorist incident would bring disgrace to them.
The UN should not remain heedless of the terrorist incidents in Tehran if it seeks to maintain its status, Elahian pointed out.
Following Ahmadi Roshan’s assassination, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the State Department condemned “any assassination or attack on an innocent person and we express our sympathies to the family.”
The latest terrorist attack comes as Iran has reached an agreement with the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany — to hold negotiations in Turkey.
The US, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to sway the UNSC to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran.
Based on these accusations, they have also repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike.
This is while in November 2011, some of the US presidential hopefuls called for conducting covert operations ranging from assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists to launching a military strike on Iran as well as sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program.
The calls for assassinations are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror.
On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks; Shahriari was killed immediately and Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, only sustained injuries.
Iran says as the UN Resolution 1747, adopted against Tehran in March 2007, cited Abbasi’s name as a “nuclear scientist,” the perpetrators were in a position to trace their victim.
According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, a fact which indicates that the IAEA has leaked information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists.
——Agencies