[Music]
some breaking news for you
iranian state media are saying one of
the country's
top nuclear scientists has been
assassinated
at press tv has quoted unofficial
sources saying that mosin
pakuruzade was killed near tehran
however conflicting reports
iran's nuclear energy organization has
denied there has been any incident
involving a nuclear scientist
clearly highly significant news if
confirmed
i'm joined by sebastian usher our middle
east editor for the world service
sebastian
uh first what are you hearing from
different sources about whether there
has been
an assassination attempt or not
well since the news broke about half an
hour ago there have been conflicting
reports originally on state-owned
media outlets like press tv it was
stated quite
clearly but from unofficial sources that
he had been assassinated
then other reports came through saying
that he had been wounded
uh but was now being treated hospital
now i've just seen out of the corner of
my eye here but the defense minister in
iran
has now announced that uh mossad factory
day
has died he has been assassinated so
that looks like official confirmation
and he is one of the most important and
if not
the most important nuclear scientists in
iran well
in terms of the covert nuclear weapons
program
uh that obviously is extremely
controversial has been for years and
years
and has been the heart at the heart of
the way that the u.s administration
under president trump and israel
have looked at iran as essentially
coming close
to posing a massive risk across
the middle east because of its uh
nuclear programme he
has been described as the father of that
program
um so you couldn't really choose
a more significant target if that is
what you were trying to harm if that is
what you're trying to damage
and also of course we have no idea who
carried out this attack but also
if you are trying to send a very very
strong message to the iranian leadership
uh that no one is safe and that action
of any kind will be taken
against uh their potential nuclear
capability we've already had
some strong words from the head of the
revolutionary guards who said that
these attacks have happened in the past
and they have been revenged in the past
and that's what will happen this time
and that is the case back uh between
2010 and 2012
there was a spate of assassinations of
iranian nuclear scientists
four of them were killed in
relatively mysterious circumstances but
iran pointed the finger
at least in terms of complicity at
israel
now we've already had the israeli prime
minister benjamin netanyahu
not making any comment on what has just
happened but we have to look at what the
context is
we've seen in the past few years with
the trump administration
in power with a very overt uh foreign
policy from saudi arabia
and israel under mr netanyahu a an
extremely strong
uh attitude a strategy of maximum
pressure the u.s has described it
against iran and now in the last weeks
of the trump administration
there's been a lot of speculation about
what uh it might do
uh in order to get its message across
once again
and potentially make things more
difficult for the president-elect joe
biden
if he were to want to return to the
iranian
nuclear deal from which president trump
walked away in 2018.
sebastian usher thank you very much and
sebastian they're saying that uh
it appears the defense ministry in iran
is confirming this assassination the
death
of the nuclear scientist