Iranian leader blames slaying on CIA, Israel
Thousands of mourners flocked to the funeral Friday of an Iranian nuclear scientist killed in a bomb blast this week that officials in Tehran blame on Western spies intent on scuttling Iran’s atomic energy program.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused the CIA and the Israeli spy agency Mossad of orchestrating the killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, and vowed to punish those responsible, Iranian news reports said.
“This was planned and supported by the CIA and Mossad services and this indicates that the global arrogance, led by America and Zionism, has reached a deadlock against the determined, pious and advancing nation of the Islamic Iran,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a statement on his website, Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency reported Thursday night.
The university professor and deputy director at Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility was killed Wednesday morning in a blast in a north Tehran neighborhood. The bombing was the fifth attack on Iranian scientists in recent years, assaults believed by Iran to be part of a covert campaign to halt its nuclear ambitions. The U.S. and its allies believe Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon; Iran says its program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.
After attending Friday prayer services in the compound of the University of Tehran, mourners marched to nearby Enghelab Square, denouncing the U.S., Israel and Britain and shouting that nuclear energy is a national right.
“I kill, I kill those who have killed my brother!” they chanted. “Nuclear energy is our inalienable right! Death to USA and death to Israel and death to Britain!”
One black-turbaned Islamic cleric amid the rallying crowd said, “We will not budge from our path of achieving peaceful nuclear energy.”
A team of black-clad people riding on a truck with mounted loudspeakers distributed images of four Iranian nuclear scientists killed in the last two years, as well as a poster depicting President Obama with a Star of David on his forehead. “Terrorist” was written on the photo in red.
Ahmadi Roshan was killed when a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car during rush-hour morning traffic. His driver later died of injuries sustained in the attack.
The killing came amid stepped-up tension between Iran and the West over the contested nuclear program. This week, Iran announced that it had begun to enrich uranium to 20% purity at a new underground bunker. The move was condemned by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said it put Iran “a significant step closer” to gaining the ability to produce weapons-grade fuel.
Iran has threatened to respond to increasing Western sanctions by closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s crude oil is shipped. The U.S. has said it will act in the case of an Iranian blockade of the waterway.