Masoud Alimohammadi (Persian: مسعود علیمحمدی) (August 24, 1959 – 12 January 2010) was an Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist and a distinguished professor of elementary particle physics at Department of Physics of University of Tehran.[1] He was assassinated on the morning of 12 January 2010 (some minutes before 8 o'clock, local time) in front of his home in Tehran, while leaving for university.[2] His burial is arranged at Emamzādeh Ali-Akbar Chizar [3] in Tehran for Thursday 14 January 2010.[4][5]
At 07:58 am, a booby-trapped motorbike parked near his car exploded while he was leaving home in Gheytariyeh neighbourhood of northern Tehran, for university.[19][20] The windows of residences around the scientist's home were shattered by the force of remote controlled explosion, and it has been reported that two other people had also been injured in the blast.[19][21][22]
Initial reports of who has been behind the bombing were disputed. Iranian state media accused Israel and the US of responsibility, while the US State Department called the allegation "absurd".[23] Ynetnews noted, that for the major Israeli news outlet, there is no known connection between his participation in the SESAME, an international synchrotron-radiation facility located in Jordan, and the assassination.[24] According to US intelligence sources Israel is running a secret war against Iran, among techniques used are the killing of important persons in the Iranian atomic energy program.[25]
Majid Shahriari (c. 1970 – 29 November 2010)[1] was a nuclear engineer who worked with the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission.
He specialized in neutron transport, a phenomenon that lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in bombs and reactors. According to The Guardian he "had no known links to banned nuclear work".[2] According to Al Jazeera he was a quantum physicist and was not a political figure at all" and he "was not involved in Iran's nuclear programme".[3] According to Ars Technica, Majid Shahriari was the top scientist and senior manager of Iran's nuclear program.[4]
Some Iranian media reports reports said he taught at the Supreme National Defense University, which is run by the Iranian Army, according to the New York Times.[5] Shahriari published dozens of esoteric conference reports and peer-reviewed articles on nuclear research.
On 29 November 2010, unidentified assailants riding motorcycles launched separate bomb attacks, killing Shahriari and injuring nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, a professor at Shahid Beheshti University where Shahriari also taught. Dr. Abbasi's wife was also hurt.[6] The killers had attached bombs to the professors' cars and detonated them from a distance.[5]
Iranian officials have variously blamed Israel and the United States for assassinating Shahriari. Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying Western nations "exercise terrorism to liquidate Iran's nuclear scientists."[7]
Darioush Rezaeinejad (Persian: داریوش رضایینژاد; c. 1976 – 23 July 2011; also Daryoush Rezaei or Dariush Rezaei-Nejad) was an Iranian shot dead in east Tehran by gunmen in July 2011 while he and his wife waited for their child outside a kindergarten.[1] At the time of his killing he was described by officials as a "nuclear scientist" and an academic associated with Iran's atomic activities, but days later as a postgraduate electrical engineering masters student at Tehran's K.N.Toosi University of Technology, who was waiting to defend his thesis.[2][3]
When news of the assassination broke, the speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, suggested the United States and Israel had killed Rezaeinejad. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, stated, "We were not involved. Our sympathies are obviously with the family of the victim."[4] Rezaeinejad is the fourth scientist "allegedly associated" with Iran's nuclear weapons program to have been killed by bomb, gunshot or poisoning since 2007.[5]
Shahram Amiri is an Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared from Iran for a little over a year under disputed circumstances. In spring 2009 he disappeared while apparently[1] on pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. About a year later two videos appeared, each purporting to be declarations by Amiri, but with contradictory stories. One showed him (or the person claiming to be him), stating that he had been kidnapped and tortured by Saudis and Americans; the other that he was in America of his own free will. In July 2010, Shahram Amiri reappeared in the American capital, Washington DC, at the Iran interests section of the Embassy of Pakistan, seeking help to return to Tehran.[2] Shortly thereafter he spoke at a press conference in Tehran telling journalists he had been kidnapped, tortured and bribed to cooperate with the CIA, but had refused.[3] He is now reportedly on trial in Iran for treason.[3]
"Israel is not responding," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier this week when asked if his country had been involved in the latest slaying of an Iranian nuclear scientist. It didn't exactly sound like a denial, and the smile on his face suggested Israel isn't too bothered by suspicions that it is responsible for a series of murders of physicists involved in the controversial Iranian nuclear program.
