Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator, accused intelligence agents of the United States and Israel on Wednesday of plotting a bombing which killed a top atomic scientist.

"We had received clear information a few days before [the assassination] that the [intelligence] service of the Zionist regime, with the cooperation of the CIA, were seeking to carry out a terrorist act in Tehran," the ISNA news agency quoted Larijani as saying.
 

Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at prestigious Tehran University, was killed on Tuesday morning by a bomb strapped to a motorcycle in the capital's well-to-do northern suburbs.
 

"They [the Israeli and US intelligence agencies] might have thought that, in the face of certain internal disputes, there was an opportunity to take this action and that they could cause friction among academics and harm the country’s nuclear research work," Larijani added.
 

Islamist students and the volunteer Basij militia condemned the killing of Ali Mohammadi, who they described as "a Basiji professor."
 

But his name appeared on a list of academics backing opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June 12 presidential election, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term.

Link to protests
The rare assassination came as the government faced the most sustained period of protest since the revolution of 1979, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets of Tehran after the June election.
 

The opposition claims the vote was massively rigged in Ahmadinejad’s favour. For the past six months, it has been holding anti-government protests at every opportunity, many of which have been broken up by police who have arrested hundreds of demonstrators.
 

The daylight killing also came amid an increasingly bitter standoff between Iran and world powers over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme, which the West suspects is cover for a weapons drive.
 

Larijani slammed US President Barack Obama for "rashly resorting to a monarchist group which has no credibility to cover such an operation."
 

"This is a new disgrace for Mr Obama," he said.
 

The former nuclear official was alluding to a group called Takavaran Tondar which claimed responsibility for the bombing on its website.
 

But according to the Rahesabz.net opposition website, the group later disavowed the claim and accused Iranian intelligence agents of "plotting a hoax."
 

Tehran officials have repeatedly accused the United States and Israel of seeking to foment unrest in Iran. The two countries have never ruled out a military strike to thwart Iran's nuclear programme.
 

Source: AFP