Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency of providing Israel with the names of Iranian nuclear scientists.
The Mehr News agency reports that on Sunday, at a Palestinian Intifida conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad announced: “After following through on our investigations, we realized that the IAEA has provided the names of Iranian nuclear scientists to the Zionists, and thus the Zionists succeeded in assassinating our scientists.”
He went on to say: “They assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, and international organizations are completely silent about this.”
In the past two years, four Iranian nuclear scientists have been the target of assassination attempts and three have been killed.
In December 2009, Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in a bomb explosion near his home.
In December 2010, Majid Shariyari and Fereydoon Abbasi Davani were targeted in separate attacks in Tehran. Abbasi Davani, who is currently the head of Iran’s Atomic Agency, escaped with injuries, but Shahriyari was killed.
Last July, Daryoosh Rezainejad, whom Iranian authorities had identified as a nuclear scientist, was shot and killed by an unidentified attacker in Tehran. Rezainejad was later revealed to be an electronics graduate student with no involvement in Iran’s nuclear program.
Iranian authorities have blamed the U.S. and Israel for all of the assassination attempts, but both countries have denied any involvement.
The German weekly Spiegel recently published a report claiming that Rezainejad’s assassination was carried out by Mossad as part of an organized targeting of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Spiegel report says the West believes targeting scientists is the best way to hamper the alleged Iranian program to build nuclear weapons.
Iran has categorically denied that it is trying to build nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear program is peaceful.
