'Iran killing denotes enemies' despair'

Chairman of Iran's Expediency Council has described the recent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist as a sign of the enemies' “desperation and weakness” in their efforts to impede the nation's scientific progress.

“Undoubtedly, such inhumane acts of terror reflect the weakness and desperation of enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in their attempts at halting the scientific advancement of our nation in its peaceful nuclear program,” Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Saturday.

The comments came in reaction to the assassination of the Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan on January 11, when an unidentified motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college of Allameh Tabatabaei University in northern Tehran. 

He was killed immediately and his driver, who sustained serious injuries, died a few hours later in hospital. 

Ahmadi Roshan was a chemical engineering graduate of Sharif University of Technology and served as deputy director of marketing at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. 

Rafsanjani further noted that as history has shown, such terrorist attacks against Iranians, carried out since the outset of Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, have been proven futile. 

The recent terror attack was carried out after a number of prominent US presidential hopefuls and former officials in November 2011 openly called for pursuing covert anti-Iran operations, including the assassination of its nuclear scientists as well as launching military strikes against the country and sabotaging its nuclear program. 

The assassination calls have not been hollow threats as a number of Iranian scientists have already been assassinated in terror acts over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror. 

On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks. Shahriari was killed immediately but Abbasi, the current director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, sustained injuries. 

Iran's Foreign Ministry blasted American and British governments on Friday for their obvious roles in assassinating the Iranian scientist in a couple of strongly-worded letters of protest to the two major Western countries. 

“The Islamic Republic reserves the right to follow up on the issue accordingly," Iran's Foreign Ministry declared.