Two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs on Wednesday to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and wounding two others, Iran's Fars News Agency reported. The attack in Teheran strongly resembles earlier killings of scientists working on the country's controversial nuclear program. The bomb explosion killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, the Fars News Agency reported. The killing of Roshan was similar to previous assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists that Teheran has blamed on Israel and the United States. Both countries have denied the accusations. Iran's First Vice-President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said Israeli agents were the perpetrators of Wednesday's assassination of the Iranian nuclear staff, the official IRNA News Agency reported. Iranian media reported earlier that Ahmadi Roshan, an Iranian national, was killed in a car bomb attack in Gol Nabi Street near the Ketabi square in northern Teheran. The attacks on Iranian scientists were viewed by Iranian officials as assassination operations carried out by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, possibly with help from US counterparts. Wednesday's killing sharpened an international confrontation over Iran's nuclear program in which threats and counter-threats are being increasingly backed with militarized displays of muscle. |