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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A senior Iranian politician has claimed that the government is concealing the scale of Israeli sabotage operations inside the country, as hardliners push President Hassan Rouhani’s government to forfeit the nuclear deal after the latest assassination of another scientist on Friday.
Iran’s hardline Guardian Council approved a parliamentary bill on Wednesday obliging the government of President Rouhani to increase the enrichment of uranium to above 20% allegedly for peaceful purposes and to end the UN inspection of its nuclear sites within a month if the US government does not lift sanctions on the banking and the oil sector by February.
The assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on Friday, widely believed to have been carried out by Israel’s national intelligence agency (Mossad), has caused heated discussions about the scale of the Jewish state’s operations in the country, as well as the capabilities of Iranian intelligence agencies to counter espionage.
Mostafa Moeen, who served as minister of culture in the 1990s for two terms and minister of science, research, and technology from 2000 to 2003 under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, has called on the establishment in Tehran to own up to the extent of the assassination campaign by Mossad.
“On 16th of January 2007, Dr. Ardeshir Hassanpour, an expert in nuclear physics working at Shiraz University and the caretaker of the Malek Ashtar research laboratory was assassinated with radioactive gas in the Sadra dormitory of the university,” Moeen a reformist politician who ran for the presidency in 2005, wrote on his Instagram page on Tuesday. “At that time the assassination of this notable nuclear scientist was denied by the officials, and he was buried as a victim of a normal gas leak.”
“Since that date, six Iranian nuclear scientist have been assassinated by the Zionist regime, but instead of uncovering and uprooting the infiltration in our intelligence and security system, every time the issue is whitewashed or treated as a factional political issue like the martyrdom of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,” Moeen wrote.
At the time of the assassination of Hassanpour, there were reports of his assassination at the hand of Mossad agents. However, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, the minister of intelligence at the time, rejected the claims, and stated that “Mossad could not carry out operations inside Iran.” There were also reports by Hassanpour’s sister, who fled Iran and resides in the United States, that her brother was killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence for not cooperating with the government on its nuclear program.
Hassanpour, who died at the age of 44, was a distinguished scientist and recognised as Iran’s top defense researcher three years before his death.
The death of Iranian scientists is believed to be the work of the Mossad agents and their operatives inside Iran as part of a campaign to stop the country’s nuclear program, which they believe is seeking to build nuclear weapons. While the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said on numerous occasions that Iran is not after the nuclear weapon, western governments and their regional allies believe that Iran’s program is potentially dangerous and should be curbed.
#Iran’s president is unhappy with the legislation of parliament to increase #nuclear activities: Let us do our job...let those who have 20 years of experience in this field & have been successful in diplomacy & have defeated US in UN, do their job w/ patience, tolerance & wisdom. pic.twitter.com/PS78ztnHcT
— Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) December 3, 2020
A landmark deal was signed in 2015 between Iran and western governments, as well as China and Russia, where Iran agreed to regulate its program and allow for foreign supervision. However, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal in 2018 and re-imposed crippling sanctions and undermined the deal.
On Wednesday, US president-elect Joe Biden stated that he would be willing to return to the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.
“If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” president-elect Joe Biden told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on Tuesday, adding that he would be prepared to lift the sanctions on Iran imposed by the Trump administration.
Rouhani has voiced his disapproval of the parliamentary bill passed on Wednesday.
“The government is not in agreement with the parliamentary bill yesterday,” Rouhani was quoted as saying during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday by IRNA. “We believe it is harmful for diplomatic activities.”
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