Israel Matzav

Iran steps up protection for nuke scientists

Ben Birnbaum reports that Iran has stepped up the protection that it provides to its nuclear scientists as a result of a series of liquidations over the last few months.

Iran has deployed security teams to protect its nuclear scientists from assassinations, the Islamic republic's interior minister announced Tuesday.

"Given the emphases laid by the president on guarding and protecting our country's scientists, a special structure has been developed for protecting the scientists and it has started its operation," said Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

The precautions are being taken weeks after a bomb plot that targeted two top Iranian nuclear scientists, widely assumed to have been the work of Israeli or other Western intelligence agencies.

Iran's intelligence minister said this month that 10 people had been arrested on suspicion of being behind an Israeli plot that killed another nuclear scientist last January.

I wonder how many Mossad agents are part of the security detail.

Heh.

The picture is Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, who got his 72 virgins last January.

UPDATE 5:30 PM

Iran says it is going to sue Israel over Ali-Mohammadi's death (Hat Tip: Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched).

"The Islamic Republic of Iran's complaint against the Zionist regime will be lodged to international bodies soon," Iran's acting foreign minister and atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Salehi said Tehran had "finished gathering evidences of the Zionist regime's involvement in the assassination of the Iranian scientist." He did not elaborate.

Last week Iranian media reported that an alleged killer of Ali Mohammadi had been trained in Israel and had been apprehended

Majid Jamali Fash, identified by Iran as "the main element" behind Ali Mohammadi's murder, was quoted as saying on state television's website that he was trained by Israeli military officers.

Jamali Fash said he was briefed about Ali Mohammadi and "practised bombing in a base near Tel Aviv several times."

Good luck with that.

Labels: Iranian nuclear program, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Mossad

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:24 PM