US denies role in covert killing of top Iranian nuclear scientist
Source: Agencies |
January 13, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
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THE United States denied any role in Wednesday's killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the latest in a series of events that have exacerbated tensions with Iran.
Iranian reports said two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's car, killing him and his driver. Roshan was a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, and the slaying suggested a widening covert effort to set back the Islamic republic's atomic program.
But US officials said they had nothing to do with it.
"I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland wouldn't answer a question about whether Washington was involved in the killing - or if the administration viewed Roshan as an innocent victim. "I'm not going to speak to who may or may not have done this," she told reporters.
The attack also came one day after Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary committee that 2012 would be critical for Iran - in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."
And other Israeli officials, hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.
"Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period," said Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military's Iranian intelligence department. "Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing."
Iranian authorities blamed Israel.
One former official said the magnetic-bomb attack bears the hallmarks of an Israeli hit. Current and former US officials say Washington prefers proxies like Israel to carry out operations in Iran, and that until two years ago, the US and Israel coordinated actions closely. They say such cooperation was halted after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power.
In the event that a military intervention might be needed to halt Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons capability, they said counterterrorist officials had considered allowing Israel to use the US-Afghan Shindand Airbase, in western Afghanistan, to launch an air strike against Iranian weapons facilities
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