TEHRAN – Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that the assassinations of nuclear scientists are instances of “nuclear terrorism”. 

Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks during an address at a meeting of the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Wednesday.

Soltanieh said that the unprecedented and appalling phenomenon of assassinating nuclear scientists is undoubtedly a kind of nuclear terrorism, and it is the IAEA’s responsibility to take measures necessary to help protect the lives of nuclear scientists.  

He went on to say that the Islamic Republic of Iran attaches great significance to nuclear security. 

Iran has so far lost two of its nuclear scientists in terrorist attacks. 

On November 29, 2010, two prominent physicists were targeted by terrorists in two separate bombings. Professor Majid Shahriari was killed and Professor Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, the current director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was injured in the attacks. The two academics were both on their way to work at Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran when they were attacked. The police say that in both incidents, terrorists riding motorcycles attached magnetic bombs to the physicists’ cars.  

Iranian elementary-particle physicist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was also assassinated in a bomb attack on January 12, 2010. Ali-Mohammadi had just left his home when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle was detonated.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ambassador Soltanieh said that members of the Group of 77 are keen to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 

Soltanieh is the chair of the Group of 77 and China. 

The Non-Aligned Movement member states also issued a statement at the meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on Wednesday in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. 

The statement was read out by Egypt’s envoy to the IAEA, Ihab Fawzi.