Bomb kills Iran nuclear scientist as crisis mounts=2

12 Jan 2012 03:29 Source: Reuters // Reuters underground in the once undeclared plant at Fordow, near the holy Shi'ite city of Qom, could make it harder for U.S. or Israeli forces to carry out veiled threats to use force against Iranian nuclear facilities. The move to Fordow could reduce the time available for diplomacy to avert any attack. The announcement on Monday that enrichment -- a necessary step to make uranium into nuclear weapons -- had begun at Fordow has given added impetus to Western efforts to impose an oil export embargo intended to pressure Tehran to halt enrichment. Iran, a signatory to the treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons, says it is entitled to conduct peaceful research and denies any military nuclear aims. Its adversaries say its failure to take up their offers of help with civilian technology undermine the credibility of its position. Oil prices have firmed 5 percent since U.S. President Barack Obama moved on New Year's Eve to block bank payments for oil to Iran. The European Union is expected this month to impose a ban on its states buying oil from Tehran, and other major customers have been looking for alternative supplies. In Iran, the new U.S. sanctions have started to bite. The rial currency has lost 20 percent of its value against the dollar in the past week and Iran has threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Robin Pomeroy and Mitra Amiri in Tehran, Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna, Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald Editing by Ralph Gowling) == Iran lacks avenues for condemning hits on scientists 11 Jan 2012 23:17 Source: Reuters // Reuters * U.N. unlikely to heed Iran's request for condemnation * U.N. investigator says killing reflects worrisome trend (Adds details) By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Iran may be outraged at the killing of another nuclear scientist in broad daylight, but it lacks viable avenues for international condemnation or prosecution of what could be an attempt to sabotage its nuclear program. Tehran urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday to condemn the latest in a series of assassinations, which it said were "cruel, inhumane and criminal acts of terrorism" aimed at undermining a nuclear program that Western powers and Israel suspect is for weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and has defied Security Council demands - backed up by four rounds of U.N. sanctions - that it stop enriching uranium.

Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee appealed to Ban and the 15-nation council "to condemn, in the strongest terms, these inhumane terrorist acts and to take effective steps towards elimination of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations." "Any kind of political and economic pressures or terrorist attacks targeting the Iranian nuclear scientists, could not prevent our nation in exercising this right" to pursue its nuclear program, Khazaee said in a letter, obtained by Reuters.

The United Nations has not heeded previous Iranian calls for condemnations of similar assassinations. Even if the Security Council were to take up the issue, the United States could use its veto power to block even the mildest condemnation. Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters earlier on Wednesday that the United Nations was aware of the reports out of Tehran but had no immediate comment. But Christof Heyns, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a statement to Reuters the Wednesday assassination seemed to reflect a "worrying trend of extrajudicial executions of nuclear scientists in Iran." "The killings are unlawful and should be condemned," Heyns said. "The onus is on the Iranian authorities to investigate what has happened, to make the evidence known and to bring the perpetrators to book." Tehran blamed the United States and Israel for the attack, although Khazaee left that out of his letter. The White House denied any U.S. role and Israel declined to comment. "STICKY MAGNETIC BOMB" "Based on the existing evidence collected by the relevant Iranian security authorities, similar to previous incidents, perpetrators used the same terrorist method in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists," Khazaee said. He said the assassins worked by attaching "a sticky magnetic bomb to the car carrying the scientists and detonating it." In October 2011, Khazaee complained to the council and Ban Ki-moon about the hits on Iranian scientists in a letter responding to U.S. allegations that Iran had plotted to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. In early November, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he had 100 "undeniable documents" proving that Washington was behind the "terrorist acts" in Iran. Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iran was handing over to the United Nations all the evidence of U.S. plots. Nothing came of the Iranian complaints. Later in November, the overwhelming majority of the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn the alleged Iranian plot. Unlike the Saudis, Iran was unable to secure a condemnation of the assassinations of its scientists. In the absence of war, targeted killings are illegal under international law. If Israel or the United States were found to be involved in the assassinations, it would violate the U.N. Charter, which bans the use of force against sovereign states. Tehran could launch legal proceedings in Iran. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, established by the U.N. Charter, would be the most obvious international forum for Iran to bring a legal case. But the court will only hear cases where states involved jointly request its involvement. One of the reasons the Saudi plot angered U.N. member states was that it was aimed at an envoy of a sovereign government. U.N. member states traditionally have no tolerance for threats against diplomats, whether friend or foe. In 2010, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency was accused of sending a hit squad to assassinate a Hamas militant in a Dubai hotel. The suspected agents were caught on videotape following their target in the hotel. Authorities in Britain and other European capitals launched their own investigations into the Dubai hit, but not because a member of Hamas had been killed. They were irritated by the fact that fraudulent European passports were used by the hit squad. (Additional reporting by Andrew Longstreth and Rebecca Hamilton; Editing by Paul Simao) =============== Iran clerics urge unity as nuclear scientist buried 13 Jan 2012 13:35 Source: Reuters // Reuters * Dead scientist's funeral sees anger at U.S., Israel * Iranian leaders vow not to abandon nuclear research * Hitman's target procured nuclear supplies -state radio * Japanese premier casts doubt on U.S.-led oil embargo (New throughout with scientist's funeral) By Mitra Amiri and Robin Pomeroy TEHRAN, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The Tehran funeral on Friday of a nuclear scientist blown up by a hitman saw the ruling clergy urge Iranians to rally behind it at a forthcoming election and face down Western threats against Iran's nuclear programme. In a mood of high emotion in a city increasingly beset by U.S. and European sanctions and fears of war with Israel and the West, hundreds of chanting mourners carried the flag-draped coffin of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, killed on Wednesday by a motorcycle assassin in rush-hour traffic. "Death to America! Death to Israel!" roared the crowd streaming away from weekly prayers at Tehran University, where the dead man was hailed as a martyr in the tradition of Imam Hussein, a revered figure for Iran's Shi'ite branch of Islam. "Nuclear energy is our absolute right!" young men chanted. State radio described the 32-year-old chemical engineer, whose driver was also buried on Friday, as having worked on procurement for the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. That disclosure may strengthen suspicions he was targeted by Israeli and Western agencies, who say that some covert Iranian purchases confirm their scepticism of Tehran's assertion that it is not seeking to develop atom bombs. With popular discontent growing over economic hardship and, among some, the lack of political freedoms, the clerical elite has portrayed Western hostility toward Iran's leaders and their avowedly peaceful nuclear energy programme as a spur to national unity and for suppression of dissident voices. Ayatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani told worshippers Ahmadi-Roshan's assassination - the latest of several attacks blamed on foreign agents - should encourage voters not to heed opposition calls to boycott a parliamentary election on March 2. Though dissenters cannot take part, the vote will be a first test for an increasingly fractured leadership since big street protests followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2009 and since popular uprisings against autocracy hit Iran's Arab neighbours, including ally Syria. "The nation should wake up," Emami-Kashani said in his sermon, repeating a warning by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Iran's Western enemies were plotting to use the election to destabilise the 32-year-old Islamic Republic. "We have the election coming up and, as the leader said, the enemy is planning for the elections. All the people should be united." COVERT WAR Ahmadi-Roshan, whose grieving family have been shown on national television accusing Iran's enemies of killing him, was to be interred at a shrine close to a fellow nuclear scientist assassinated in the same way two years ago, on Jan. 12, 2010. Ahmadinejad, away on a tour of Latin America, said: "Once again the dirty hands of arrogance and the Zionist elements have deprived our scientific and academic community of the graceful presence of one of our young intellectuals and scientists. "Those criminals who think they can impede Iranian intellectuals and elites in their growth and evolution should know that such behaviour does not only not prevent the dear country from its development path but it multiplies Iranians' will and determination to pursue their national pride in the world's scientific fields," ISNA news agency quoted him saying. Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary-general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights, has written to the U.N. human rights commissioner calling for a committee to be set up to investigate the killing, Fars news agency said. U.N. officials have said "extrajudicial executions" are illegal, but that it is up to Iran in the first instance to investigate the killing. Israel, which has floated threats of military action to thwart any Iranian nuclear weaponry, has made no comment. Presumed owner of the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel has a history of killing enemies abroad and had warned Iran only this week to expect more "unnatural" mishaps if it pursued its research and development in nuclear science. Some Iranians have called for reprisals against Israel. The United States, sympathetic to its ally's view that an Iranian atomic bomb could threaten the Jewish state's existence, has strenuously denied killing the scientist and says it is sticking to economic sanctions to change Tehran's mind. "We have some ideas as to who might be involved," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday. "But we don't know exactly who was involved." OIL EMBARGO U.S. and European efforts to cripple Iran's finances by discouraging or banning countries and firms from importing its oil have been proceeding, though China, Iran's biggest customer, is reluctant to oblige and other countries too fear that to stop purchasing Iranian crude could badly hurt their own economies. Japan's policy on Iranian oil was left in doubt on Friday after the prime minister distanced himself from his finance minister's pledge to reduce oil imports in support of the U.S. push to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons. The standoff over the nuclear programme, including a threat by Iran to block the Gulf oil shipping lanes and a U.S. warning of naval action to keep them open, has sent world oil prices higher and fueled fears of a major conflict in a region already electric with tension between an array of competing interests. However, analysts and diplomats also note that rhetoric and symbolic actions are not new, and that diplomacy has defused previous crises before an outbreak of conflict that probably would not serve the interests of any of the established powers. One Western diplomat who follows negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme closely said: "I'm completely unable to say which way the situation will develop. "If you constantly get diverging statements and decisions from various parts of the Iranian regime it is difficult to say how far it is intentional and how much it is a result of the internal competition and the fact that it is a country with multiple centres of power." Western diplomats say that Iran will need to show genuine readiness to address mounting suspicions about its nuclear programme at rare talks with senior U.N. officials this month to convince a sceptical West that it is not just playing for time. IAEA INSPECTION A high-level team from the U.N. atomic watchdog is expected to visit Tehran later this month to discuss its growing concerns, according to diplomatic sources. Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said the Islamic Republic is ready to answer the agency's questions in order to remove "any ambiguities" about its nuclear work and clear up the issue once and for all. But Iranian officials have used such language before, without this leading to concrete progress, and diplomats say this will not be enough to satisfy the IAEA mission, including the agency's chief safeguards inspector, Herman Nackaerts. One Western envoy said: "This road is paved with danger and past experience cannot render anyone optimistic." Nackaerts, IAEA Assistant Director General Rafael Grossi and other senior officials will probably visit around Jan. 28. The Iranian leadership has come under increased pressure since the IAEA reported in November that Tehran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon and that secret research to that end may be continuing. Iran says it wants only nuclear power and some other civilian types of radioactive material. This week, its announcement that it was enriching uranium at a new and potentially bombproof ===============