A powerful bomb killed an Iranian scientist Tuesday outside his north Tehran home, a mysterious assassination that triggered highly charged accusations with potentially serious political repercussions.
Iran’s hard-line Islamic government blamed the U.S., Israel and other Western interests for the death of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, saying the Tehran University physicist was killed as part of an effort to slow the nation’s nuclear program.
Reformist Web sites and acquaintances, on the other hand, accused hard-liners of killing Ali Mohammadi to spread fear on restive campuses that have become hotbeds of anti-government activity.
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The charges and countercharges cast a sharp focus on Iran’s domestic and international travails and are likely to add to the nation’s volatile political atmosphere.
Iranian news outlets close to the hard-liners rushed to paint the scholar as a supporter of the government, which has forged ahead with nuclear development despite heightened international scrutiny from governments that fear Tehran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.
State television described Ali Mohammadi as a “revolutionary university professor martyred in a terrorist operation by counterrevolutionary agents affiliated” with the West and Israel.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election victory in June was the catalyst for what have been the largest street protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, also blamed the West.
White House spokesman Bill Burton called Ahmadinejad’s allegations “absurd.”
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Group cites crackdown
WASHINGTON — The crackdown in Iran in 2009 highlighted a decline in freedom and rights for the fourth consecutive year, the democracy watchdog group Freedom House reported Tuesday.
The Middle East remained the most repressive region, and Africa sustained the most significant decline, the report said.
Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, cited attacks on front-line democracy activists, including what she said was brutal repression on Iran’s streets.
— Associated Press
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