US, Israel, Britain, MKO Collaborating in Assassination of Iranian Scientists, Says Iranian Defense Minister

November 30, 2010

TEHRAN (FNA)-

 Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that the US, Israel and British spy agencies and the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) are conducting joint terrorist operations to assassinate Iranian university professors and scientists.

"This inauspicious act was sponsored by the Zionist regime and in coordination with the western intelligence agencies, the US and Britain in particular, and was carried out by MKO hirelings," Vahidi said in Iran's Northern city of Babol today.

Vahidi strongly condemned the recent terrorist attacks in Tehran, and called on the international community and those who claim to be supporters of the human rights to react to the terrorist moves.

He expressed confidence that Iran's security and intelligence bodies will succeed in defusing enemies' new plot as they did in the past.

Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the Zionist regime and certain western countries responsible for the assassination of Iranian university professors Fereidoon Abbasi Davani and Majid Shahriari in Tehran on Monday morning, but meantime underlined that such criminal acts can never hinder Iran's progress.

"The western governments and the Zionist regime have a hand in the assassination of the two Iranian university professors," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference here in Tehran on Monday.

Stressing that such criminal acts and plots which have been hatched to create insecurity in Iran cannot undermine the country's resolve towards progress, he warned about Tehran's retaliatory measures against the enemies.

The Iranian president also urged the country's security officials to rapidly identify those behind the attacks and introduce them to the public.

Abbasi Davani and Shahriari were assassinated in separate terrorist bomb attacks here in Tehran on Monday morning with the latter killed immediately after the blast.

Initial investigations revealed that terrorists had planted bombs on the teachers' vehicles and blasted their cars at 7:45 a.m. (0415 GMT).

An eye witness present at the scene of the terrorist attack told FNA that the terrorists riding two motorcycles came close to the vehicle carrying Shahriari at 7:45 a.m. and threw a bomb at the car which blasted and killed the lecturer and wounded his wife and his driver.

Abbasi Davani was also assassinated the same way, but he could survive the attack and was transferred to a Tehran hospital along with his wife after being wounded in the attack.

Another Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, was also assassinated in a terrorist bomb attack in Tehran in January.

The bomb which killed Ali Mohammadi had been planted on a motorcycle outside his home in Tehran's Northern neighborhood of Qeytariyeh.

After the assassination, President Ahmadinejad said that the Zionist regime of Israel was responsible for the terrorist attack on Ali Mohammadi.

The report of experts on the scene of the explosion said that the assassination had been conducted in the method used by the Zionists, Ahmadinejad said at the time.