TEHRAN: Two car bomb blasts killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another in Tehran Monday in what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an Israeli and West-sponsored attack on its atomic program. The bombings, rare attacks in the Iranian capital, occurred ahead of a possible meeting between Iran and major powers next month to discuss its nuclear activity, which Western officials suspect is aimed at developing atom bombs. Iran denies this. In the past few months, Tehran has arrested a number of alleged “nuclear spies”, warning citizens against leaking information to foreign secret services. “Majid Shahriyari was martyred and his wife was injured ... Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and his wife were both wounded,” state radio said, referring to the two scientists. “The attackers planted a bomb on each of the teachers' vehicles.” Abbas-Davani has been personally subjected to UN sanctions because of what Western officials said was his involvement in suspected nuclear weapons research. He was “not seriously injured in the blast,” the semi-official Mehr news agency said. “One can undoubtedly see the hands of Israel and Western governments in the assassination which unfortunately took place,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference. Ahmadinejad also said enemies of Iran used computer code to make “limited” problems for centrifuges involved in uranium enrichment at some of its nuclear sites. “They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts,” he said, the first time Iran has said a cyberbug affected its centrifuges. “They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that and today they are not able (to do that) anymore,” he said. Atomic energy agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Shahriyari had a role in one of its biggest nuclear projects, but did not elaborate, the official news agency IRNA said.. Salehi warned enemies not to “play with fire” by carrying out such attacks. “Our nation's patience has a limit ... When it is over our enemies will face a tedious fate,” Salehi said, as quoted by IRNA. “Dr Shahriyari was my student for many years and he had good cooperation with the Atomic Energy Organization.” Iranian television showed police and plainclothes security agents examining a silver-colored Peugeot 206 car with what looked like shrapnel holes in its bonnet. Another car was shown with its windows smashed and a door blown off. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Iranian officials and media blamed Israel, which Tehran calls “the Zionist regime”, and the United States for Shahriyari's death. “The sinister Americans and Zionists thought they could derail our nation from its scientific path and stop our elites from progressing in science by killing our scientists,” Mohammad-Reza Naqdi, head of the pro-government Islamic Basij militia, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. “We will certainly avenge these crimes of the Americans and Zionists and soon the gallows will be earmarked for the retribution of the blood of Shahriyari.”
