Iran blamed U.S., Israel for killing of scientist

[Mike Manson]

Iran blamed U.S., Israel for killing of scientist

By Ramin Mostafavi and Hashem Kalantari

TEHRAN | Sun Jul 24, 2011 7:45am EDT

(Reuters) - A senior Iranian official on Sunday blamed the United States and Israel for the killing of an Iranian scientist, who the deputy interior minister said was not linked to Iran's nuclear program as reported by media.

Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university lecturer, was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran Saturday. Some media reports said Rezaie was a nuclear scientist but Deputy Interior Minister Safarali Baratlou said this was not true.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani in a speech broadcast live on state TV blamed the United States and Israel for the killing.

"The terrorist action by American and the Zionist regime (Israel) yesterday ... is another example of the level of their animosity (against Iran)," he said.

Iranian media said security officials were investigating the killing.

Several nuclear scientists have been assassinated in Iran in the last few years.

One scientist was killed and another wounded in Tehran in November, which Iranian officials blamed Israel and the United States for. Washington dismissed that at the time.

It has not been officially confirmed whether Rezaie was involved in Iran's nuclear program, as reported by some media.

Lawmaker Zohreh Elahian said Rezaie had no links to Iran's nuclear program, which the United States and its allies say is a cover to build bombs.

"Rezaie was an elite Iranian physicist ... he was murdered by our country's enemies. But ... he didn't have any connection to Iran's nuclear activities," said Elahian, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Tehran governor Morteza Tamaddon warned that Iran "preserves the right to retaliate," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. Tamaddon did not elaborate.

Iran, a major oil producer, says its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes and so far has refused to halt its sensitive uranium enrichment activities, as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

The refusal has led to the imposition of sanctions by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.

Iranian MPs Sunday passed a bill obliging the government to impose sanctions on U.S. officials like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and military commanders at U.S. detention centres Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The bill, analysts say, is a retaliatory measure against blacklisting senior Iranian officials by Washington, who it says were responsible for human rights abuses in the Islamic state.

Iran rejects accusations about its human rights record.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/24/us-iran-scientist-idUSTRE76N0N520110724

 

[LONDON]

iran is too gangsta for the imperialist system, everybody knows the iranians ain't looking to get no nuke, there nuclear ambitions are purely for commercial means, you see what i'm saying, even the CIA said this, they said they dropped there nuke program in 2003, the system is just shook if iran gets a nuke, there will have to deal wit local politics in the middle east on a equal footing and respect and won't be able to take the piss like they do now and do imperialist wars in the region for middle eastern resources

me personally now, i hope iran do get a nuke, it would balance shit up and bring peace to the region, it would mean equal footing on a diplomacy level, no piss taking, the only country in the world that has used nukes on this planet is the US goverment, the country that has invaded and fucked up peoples country's the most to steal peoples resources throughout history in this century and last is the united states goverment, you get my drift

its the US goverment and its puppet goverments worldwide and the israeli goverment people worldwide has too worry about, truss me on that

 

[CaseyJones]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did want/produce a nuke for that very reason, London. So they can sit at the grown-ups table. Notice how every single country with a nuke gets a certain level of respect and consideration from the West? I think they know using nukes preemptively is suicide.

 

[JoMoDo]

Any Iranian scientist involved in their nuclear program will get murked.