The Associated Press
Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said the arrests have given Iran’s secret services “new clues” about the people involved in the deadly attacks, which it blames on Western intelligence agencies.
According to Iranian authorities, assailants on motorcycles attached magnetized bombs to the cars of two nuclear scientists as they were driving to work in Tehran Monday, killing one and wounding the other.
Iran says the attacks are part of a covert campaign by Israel and the West to sabotage its nuclear program which the U.S. and its allies suspect is aimed at producing nuclear weapons — something Iran denies.
Officials say that campaign includes the abduction of Iranian scientists, the sale of faulty equipment and the planting of a destructive computer worm known as Stuxnet, which briefly brought Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to a halt last month.
“A number of people were identified and arrested in connection with the two terrorist attacks,” Moslehi said, according to state TV’s website. He didn’t specify how many were arrested.
Moslehi accused the Israeli Mossad spy agency, Britain’s MI6 and the CIA of being involved in the attacks, and added that the assassination won’t affect Iran’s nuclear program.
“The enemy must know that it won’t get anywhere with such acts,” he said.
The daring attacks — if they were the work of a foreign power — suggest that the standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran’s uranium enrichment program has entered a new and extremely dangerous phase.
Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Wednesday the assassination was a warning to Iran before Dec. 6-7 nuclear talks in Geneva between representatives of Iran and six world powers namely the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
But the hardline daily Kayhan said Iran should put off the talks and instead take revenge against the U.S., Britain and Israel for their alleged involvement in the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist.
“It’s Iran’s right to cancel next week’s talks due to the recent terrorist crimes against our two nuclear scientists,” it said.
The paper, which is run by a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there was no reason Israeli, American and British scientists and their nuclear facilities remain safe when Iran’s nuclear scientists are killed and its nuclear plants sabotaged.
Several Iranian news websites said Wednesday the man who survived, Fereidoun Abbasi, realized he was under attack and was able to stop the car and jump out along with his wife.
Abbasi appears to be the more senior of the two. He is on a sanctions list under U.N. Security Council resolution 1747, passed in 2007, which described him as a Defense Ministry scientist with links to the Institute of Applied Physics, working closely with someone heading secret nuclear projects with possible military dimensions.
Iran has vowed to increase security for its nuclear scientists to protect them from possible attacks in the future.
Salehi, Iran’s nuclear chief, said the two scientists already lived in protected housing complexes but adequate security had not been anticipated while driving them to work.
Kayhan also reported Wednesday that an Iranian policeman was killed in clashes at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport a day earlier.
The paper said police became suspicious of a group of people at Mehrabad airport, which is used for domestic flights, and were following them when one of the suspects opened fire, killing one policeman, and injuring another.
There was no indication that the deadly attack was related to Shahriari’s assassination but Iran has increased security measures in its wake.
