Bomb kills Iranian nuclear expert

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and his driver Wednesday, reports said. The slayings suggest a widening covert effort to set back Iran's atomic program.

The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program. It is certain to amplify authorities' claims of clandestine operations by Western powers and their allies to halt Iran's nuclear advances.

The blast killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, state TV reported. State news agency IRNA said Roshan had "organizational links" to Iran's nuclear agency, which suggests a direct role in key aspects of the program.

Natanz is Iran's main enrichment site, but officials claimed earlier this week that they are expanding some operations to an underground site south of Tehran with more advanced equipment.

The U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a key element of the nuclear program that the West suspects is aimed at producing atomic weapons. Uranium enriched to low levels can be used as nuclear fuel but at higher levels, it can be used as material for a nuclear warhead.

Iran denies it is trying to make nuclear weapons, saying its program is for peaceful purposes only and is geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Tehran has accused Israel's Mossad, the CIA and Britain's spy agency of engaging in an underground "terrorism" campaign against nuclear-related targets, including at least three slayings since early 2010 and the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key component in nuclear fuel production. All three countries have denied the Iranian accusations.

Israeli officials, however, have hinted about covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

On Tuesday, Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran — in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."

"Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period," added 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."

Defiant Iranian authorities pointed the finger at archfoe Israel.

First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said Israeli agents were behind the attack, but cannot "prevent progress" in what Iran claims are peaceful nuclear efforts.

Safar Ali Baratloo, a senior security official, was quoted by Fars as also saying the attack was the work of Israelis.

"The magnetic bomb is of the same types already used to assassinate our scientists," he said.

Roshan, 32, was inside the Iranian-assembled Peugeot 405 car together with two others when the bomb exploded near Gol Nabi Street in north Tehran, Fars reported. It said Roshan's driver later died at a hospital from wounds sustained in the attack.

IRNA said an 85-year old passer-by was wounded in the blast.

Fars described the explosion as a "terrorist attack" targeting Roshan, a graduate of the prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.

Roshan was a chemistry expert who was involved in building polymeric layers for gas separation, which is the use of various membranes to isolate gases. He was also deputy director of commercial affairs for the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in central Iran. According to conservative news website mashreghnews.ir, Roshan was in charge of purchasing and supplying equipment for the facility.

Natanz is the centerpiece of Iran's efforts to make its own nuclear fuel. But Iran said earlier this week it was expanding some operations to a bunker-like site south of Tehran protected under 300 feet (90 meters) of rock. The existence of the Fordo facility has been known for more than two years, but some Western officials fear the opening of the labs could be another step toward developing nuclear arms.

The conservative news website, alef.ir, posted several papers Roshan contributed. It said his specialty, polymeric layers, have uses in uranium enrichment by having uranium gas pass through filtering membranes.

Since December, Iran has held or announced a series of war games that included threats to close the Gulf's vital Strait of Hormuz — the passageway for about one-sixth of the world's oil — in retaliation for stronger U.S.-led sanctions.

"Assassinations, military threats and political pressures ... The enemy insists on the tactic of creating fear to stop Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Fars quoted lawmaker Javad Jahangirzadeh as saying in reaction to the blast.

A similar bomb explosion exactly two years ago — Jan. 12, 2010 — killed Tehran University professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a senior physics professor. He was killed when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency said that Roshan had planned to attend a memorial ceremony later Wednesday for the slain professor.

In November 2010, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in different parts of the capital killed another nuclear scientist and wounded one more.

The slain scientist, Majid Shahriari, was a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and cooperated with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The wounded scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, was almost immediately appointed head of Iran's atomic agency.

Shahriari's expertise — neutron transport — lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs. And Abbasi, now Iran's nuclear chief, has been described as a laser expert and one of the few top Iranian specialists in nuclear isotope separation.

And in July 2011, motorcycle-riding gunmen killed Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics student. Other reports identified him as a scientist involved in suspected Iranian attempts to make nuclear weapons.

Rezaeinejad allegedly participated in developing high-voltage switches, a key component in setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead.

The United States and some allies say Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons technology. Iran denies the allegations, saying that its program is intended for energy and medical research.

The latest blast is certain to bring fresh charges by Iran that the U.S. and allies are waging a clandestine campaign of bloodshed and sabotage in attempts to set back Iran's nuclear efforts.

"Instead of actually fighting a conventional war, Western powers and their allies appear to be relying on covert war tactics to try to delay and degrade Iran's nuclear advancement," said Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

He said the use of magnetic bombs bears the hallmarks of covert operations.

"It's a very common way to eliminate someone," he added. "It's clean, easy and efficient."

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst based in Israel, said Iran's leadership is being pushed toward a decision on whether to "retaliate or compromise" as sanctions squeeze the economy and undercut the value of the Iranian rial.

"From the international consensus that we can see against Iran, even if (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) does retaliate, it's not very likely that the pressure — sanctions and isolation — would ease," he said. "He's in a tight spot."

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Associated Press writer Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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Some crew still aboard burning Russian nuclear sub

MOSCOW (AP) — A major fire aboard a docked Russian nuclear submarine that injured seven crew members with toxic fumes and left others stuck inside the vessel appeared to be brought under control on Friday, and officials said the blaze had caused no radiation leaks.

The fire began Thursday at an Arctic shipyard where the submarine Yekaterinburg was in drydock. At midday Friday, Russian state television showed the rubber-coated hull of the submarine still smoldering, with firefighters gathering around it and some standing on top to douse it with water.

An unspecified number of crew have remained inside the submarine, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. He insisted there was no danger of fire spreading inside the sub and said the crew has reported that the conditions on board have remained normal. Konashenkov's statement left it unclear whether the crew were trapped there or ordered to stay inside.

The Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry said there has been no radiation leak from the fire.

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority said it has received information from both civil and military authorities in Russia that there was no radioactive leak. The Norwegian agency said it has not measured any increased radioactivity, adding it is following the situation closely.

However, the governor in Finnmark, Norway's northeastern province that borders Russia's Murmansk Oblast, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he was disappointed with Russia's response. "There have been problems to get clear information from the Russian side," Gunnar Kjoennoey was quoted as saying. "We have an agreement to exchange information in such cases, but there has been no information from the Russian side so far."

Russia's military says the blaze started on wooden scaffolding and then engulfed the sub's outer hull. It said the vessel's nuclear reactor had been shut down and its nuclear-tipped missiles and other weapons had been unloaded before the repairs.

Toxic fumes from the blaze had spread to the town of Roslyakovo where the shipyard is located, but officials said there was no need to evacuate local residents.

It would take a few more hours to fully extinguish the smoldering outer hull, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a midday meeting. He said seven members of the submarine crew have been hospitalized after inhaling poisonous carbon monoxide fumes from the fire.

The Yekaterinburg is a Delta-IV-class nuclear-powered submarine that normally carries 16 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was built in 1984.

Most modern submarines' outer hulls are covered with rubber to make them less noisy and more difficult for an enemy to detect.

The chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, led a team of senior military officials to Roslyakovo to oversee the rescue efforts.

Military prosecutors have launched an investigation into a possible breach of safety regulations that led to the fire. President Dmitry Medvedev summoned top Cabinet officials to report on the situation and demand a punishment for any culprits.

The Interfax news agency reported Friday that the damage from the fire could be so massive that the submarine would need to be scrapped. But Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the nation's military industries, said after the meeting that the submarine will rejoin the navy after repairs.

The Russian navy suffered its worst accident in August 2000, when the Kursk nuclear submarine exploded and sank during naval maneuvers, killing all 118 crew members aboard.

A 2008 accident at the Nerpa nuclear-powered submarine killed 20 Russian seamen and injured 21 others when its fire-extinguishing system activated in error and spewed suffocating Freon gas.

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Jan Olsen contributed to this report from Copenhagen.

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Michele Bachmann’s Pakistan nuclear intelligence source revealed

Did Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) divulge classified information in discussing the vulnerability of Pakistani nuclear sites to jihadists at Tuesday's GOP presidential debate?

Asked by CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer if the United States should continue providing foreign aid to Pakistan, Bachmann--a member of the House Intelligence panel--showed she knows her Pakistan brief.

"Pakistan has been the epicenter of dealing with terrorism," she said. "It is one of the most violent, unstable nations that there is."

Then--perhaps prompted by the fairly fluent and informed response on Pakistan given by former China envoy Jon Huntsman on the issue--Bachmann went on to cite some eyebrow-raising concerns posed by the unstable, nuclear-armed south Asian nation:

"We have to recognize that 15 of the sites, nuclear sites are available or are potentially penetrable by jihadists," Bachmann said. "Six attempts have already been made on nuclear sites.  This is more than an existential threat.  We have to take this very seriously."

Live-blogging the debate last night, your Yahoo News correspondent wondered if that information might have come from a classified intelligence briefing. And evidently, said correspondent did not wonder alone:

Bachmann's contention that Islamist jihadists have made six attempts to seize Pakistani nuclear sites "is not information that's ever been made public!" Gawker wrote, linking to a debate post by National Journal's Yochi Dreazen. "Which raises the question: did Bachmann just leak classified information to a national audience?"

Well, apparently the answer is no.

The information came not from a classified intelligence briefing but, rather, from a recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder in the Atlantic Monthly--a sister site of the National Journal--according to the Huffington Post.

As Goldberg and Ambinder reported in their Pakistan dispatch:

"At least six facilities widely believed to be associated with Pakistan's nuclear program have already been targeted by militants. [...] If jihadists are looking to raid a nuclear facility, they have a wide selection of targets: Pakistan is very secretive about the locations of its nuclear facilities, but satellite imagery and other sources suggest that there are at least 15 sites across Pakistan at which jihadists could find warheads or other nuclear materials."

Bachmann concluded her Pakistan response at Tuesday's debate by characterizing the troubled south Asian nation as "too nuclear too fail." That phrase apparently originated with Brookings South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen, who shared the coinage with Ambinder and Goldberg, the Huffington Post notes.

In any event, government secrecy expert Steve Aftergood waved off concerns that Bachmann would have gotten herself in much trouble with the disclosure, regardless of its genesis.

"Ironically, I think Bachmann may be protected by the presumption that whatever the candidates say in this campaign is likely to be exaggerated and unreliable," Aftergood, with the Federation of American Scientists, told Yahoo News by email Wednesday. "So any official action to rebuke her for disclosing classified information would backfire.  It would tend to validate her statement."

"I don't know whether there are '15 nuclear sites' in Pakistan that may be at risk," he added "And having heard Rep. Bachmann's remarks, I still don't know."

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