Bombings Hit Atomic Experts in Iran Streets

One of the two cars bombed Monday in Tehran. One Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and another was wounded in the attacks.

By WILLIAM YONG and ROBERT F. WORTH
NYT

TEHRAN — Unidentified assailants riding motorcycles carried out separate bomb attacks here on Monday against two of the country’s top nuclear scientists, killing one and prompting accusations that the United States and Israel were again trying to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.

The slain scientist, Majid Shahriari, managed a “major project” for the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, told the semiofficial IRNA news agency. His wounded colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi, is believed to be even more important; he is on the United Nations Security Council’s sanctions list for ties to the Iranian nuclear effort.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that “undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved” in the attacks. He also publicly acknowledged, apparently for the first time, that the country’s nuclear program had been disrupted recently by malicious computer software that attacked its centrifuges.

The two scientists are among the most prominent in the Iranian nuclear world, and the brazen daylight attacks on them seemed certain to worsen tensions over the country’s controversial uranium enrichment efforts.

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