Iran makes arrests in connection with expert assassinations

Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi says a number of terrorists involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists have been identified and arrested.

Moslehi told reporters on Sunday that Iran has recently made important arrests, and explained that those apprehended by the security forces have been arrested for drug and security charges, Mehr News Agency reported.

“Some of those drug kingpins recently identified and arrested have links to the targeted killing of Iranian nuclear scientists,” the senior Iranian official pointed out. He, however, declined to provide any further details on the case.

Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was targeted on January 11, when an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran. He was immediately killed and his driver, who sustained injuries, died a few hours later in hospital.

Ahmadi Roshan was a Sharif University of Technology chemical engineering graduate and served as the deputy director of marketing at Natanz nuclear facility.

The deadly incident happened after some US presidential hopefuls in November 2011 openly called for conducting covert operations against Iran to stop its nuclear energy program, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and carrying out acts of sabotage against the country’s nuclear facilities.

Darioush Rezaeinejad, Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, other Iranian scientists, are also among the victims of such acts of terror.

On July 23, 2011, unidentified gunmen killed Rezaeinejad outside his house in Tehran.

Rezaeinejad and his wife were on their way to their child’s kindergarten when they were approached by two men on a motorbike. The gunmen called him by name and shot Rezaeinejad, 35, in the neck when he turned around.

On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks. Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, sustained injuries.