Israel's Mossad intelligence agency was behind the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran in late July, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported Monday. The report quotes an anonymous Israeli intelligence source who said that Dr. Darioush Rezaei's assassination was the first major operation undertaken by new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo. Dr. Rezaei, 35, who held a doctorate in physics and was a lecturer at Mohaghegh Ardabili University, was also a senior member of Irans Atomic Energy Organization. Reports at the time said two masked assailants on a motorcycle had fired several shots at him as he exited his car. Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani accused the U.S. and Israel of masterminding the killing, Mehr, Iran's official news agency, reported. The American-Zionist terrorist act against one of the country's scientists is yet another sign of the Americans' degree of animosity, Larijani said at the time. Israel has refused to comment on allegations of involvement in the nuclear scientist's death. Rezaei was the third high-profile academic with ties to Iran's nuclear program to have been killed in the past 10 months. On November 29, 2010, Majid Shahriar, a quantum physicist who worked with the Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and lectured at Tehran University, was killed when unidentified assailants on motorcycles attached a bomb to his car and detonated it from a distance. And in January 2010, Dr. Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor of physics at Tehran University, was killed when a bomb attached to his car was detonated near his home in northern Tehran. After Mohammadi's death, Iranian authorities announced the arrest of several suspects, one of who was named as Jamal Pesh, who confessed on Iranian television that he worked for the Mossad and had spent time in Tel Aviv. The Mossad has, in recent years, faced allegations of involvement in the killing of other high-profile targets, most notably Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a hotel room in Dubai last January. Mabhouh's assassination prompted accusations from the international community that the Mossad was responsible, and that the agency used forged European and Australian passports in the killing. Israeli diplomats in Britain, Australia and Ireland were expelled in protest. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan never commented on the Mabhouh affair, but sparked outrage in Israel when he spoke out against a possible military strike on Iran after leaving office in January.
