Iran blames U.S., Israel for bomb attacks on its nuclear scientists

As the New York Times reports in its survey of revelations from the latest WikiLeaks document dump, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued a dire warning to the United States and other world powers last year. One of the cables from the WikiLeaks cache indicates that Barak cautioned that the world had just a 6-to-18-month window "in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable." Another of the cables revealed that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly asked the United States to attack Iran in order to subvert its nuclear ambitions.

So it comes as something less than a shock that Iranian leaders now suggest that the United States and Israel are responsible for bomb attacks targeting two key Iranian nuclear scientists. According to Iranian state television, assassins detonating bombs from nearby motorcycles killed nuclear researcher Majid Shahriar and badly wounded another, Fereidoun Abbasi.

"American and the Zionist regime's agents carried out two assassinations against two Basiji professors of Shahid Beheshti University, one has been martyred and the other one has been severely injured along with his wife," Iranian news agency Fars reported.

The attacks bear a close resemblance to an attack earlier this year killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a Tehran University physics professor who was also believed to be working on Iran's nuclear program. Mohammadi was killed when a motorcycle laden with bombs exploded near his car as he headed out for work.

(Photo via AP/Vahid Salemi)