Iranian nuclear scientist killed in bomb blast

Tehran (Agencies) Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed Tuesday in a rare bomb attack in Tehran which state media quickly blamed on "counter-revolutionaries" and foreign powers.

"Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was a professor in the nuclear field and there have so far been no arrests of those behind this incident," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying.

Mohammadi, a lecturer at Tehran University, died when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle was triggered by remote control outside his home in the northern Tehran neighborhood of Qeytariyeh, state media said.

ran's state broadcaster said Mohammadi was "assassinated in a terrorist act by counter-revolutionaries and agents of the arrogance," without naming any sources.

Iranian officials usually refer to the United States and some other Western powers as the "global arrogance."

Bomb attacks are rare in Iran although several security officials and members of the elite Revolutionary Guards have been killed in bombings by rebels in restive Sistan-Baluchestan province in eastern Iran.

Meanwhile five Iranian diplomats filed for political asylum in several European countries in protest of the latest repressive practices of the government against opposition, sources told Al Arabiya.

The diplomats’ action came in the aftermath of the arrest of 30 mothers while protesting the death or disappearance of their children in the aftermath of the political unrest that followed the 2009 presidential elections.

Iran's state-run Arabic-language TV Al-Alam identified Mohammadi as a "hezbollahi" teacher -- a term used for staunch supporters of the Iranian regime.

"This assassination may have been carried out by the Hypocrites (Iran's exiled People's Mujahedeen opposition) or planned by the Zionist regime," Al-Alam said.

Iranian authorities have consistently accused arch foes the United States and Israel of seeking to foment unrest in Iran.

Hardliners have also accused the People's Mujahedeen of infiltrating anti-government protests and carrying out attacks.

None of the reports said whether Mohammadi was connected to Iran's controversial nuclear program, which the West suspects is masking an atomic weapons program.

Iran has been under international pressure to halt its sensitive uranium enrichment program which is at the centre of fears about Iran's ambitions as the process which makes nuclear fuel can also be used to make atom bombs.