Israel’s war on Iranian science: Inside the targeted murders of nuclear minds

Fereshteh Sadeghi, The Cradle, July 4, 2025 —

In a single week of strikes, the occupation state may have wiped out over a decade of Iranian nuclear progress by assassinating key figures in the country’s scientific and defense institutions.

In the early hours of 13 June, Israel launched an unprecedented wave of aerial attacks on Iranian territory. The first round unleashed the most systematic assassination campaign against Tehran’s nuclear scientists and military commanders in recent history.

While state media reported the deaths of over 35 senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers – including its commander, Brigadier General Hussein Salami – Israel’s less-publicized targets were the scientific architects behind Iran’s nuclear and technological advancement. 

On 14 June, the Israeli military stated, “the IDF eliminated nine nuclear scientists and experts in the Iranian nuclear project.” An infographic later pushed that number to 11. 

But The Cradle’s investigation confirms that at least 17 prominent scientific figures were assassinated, including one leading artificial intelligence researcher.

This new phase in Israel’s war on Iran marks a shift from covert killings to open, military-targeted assassinations, blurring the line between psychological warfare and battlefield elimination.

The scientists in Tel Aviv’s crosshairs

Among those eliminated in the Israeli strikes were two towering figures: Mohammad-Mehdi Tehranchi and Fereydoun Abbasi, both longtime contributors to Iran’s nuclear and defense research.

Tehranchi, who’d received his PhD from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, was a professor at the Shaheed Beheshti University and was a theoretical physicist, headed Iran’s Supreme Council for Science, Research, and Technology, and served as president of Islamic Azad University. 

He was also closely linked to the Amad Project – the alleged pre-2004 Iranian research program accused by western states of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, and was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020.

According to US intelligence, Tehranchi served as a supervisor in the program, which was administered through the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), a Defense Ministry affiliate.

The significance of this connection was underscored on 25 June, when Israeli warplanes targeted and struck buildings belonging to both the SPND and the Ministry of Defense – marking a direct attack on the institutional infrastructure behind Iran’s strategic scientific capabilities.

His close friendship with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – the highest-ranking Iranian scientist ever assassinated – placed him squarely in Tel Aviv’s crosshairs.

After Fakhrizadeh’s death, in November 2020, Tehranchi had been under round-the-clock protection. The Israelis targeted his residence, killing him, his wife, and four bodyguards.

Abbasi, the second major figure, previously headed the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and was a survivor of a 2010 assassination attempt – the same day his colleague Majid Shahriyari was killed. A parliamentarian at the time of his death, Abbasi was not just a symbolic target, but an active contributor to Iran’s nuclear planning.

 Decapitating Iran’s scientific core

Beyond these two high-profile figures, the list of those assassinated reveals the depth and intent of Tel Aviv’s operation. Abdolhamid Minouchehr, dean of nuclear engineering at Shaheed Beheshti University, was among the first killed. So was Akbar Motalebizadeh, a nuclear physicist and professor who had succeeded Fakhrizadeh as head of the SPND, and who died with his wife in Absard – the same town where Fakhrizadeh was assassinated four years earlier.

Saeed Barji Kazerouni, a professor at Malek Ashtar University and an expert in nuclear applications in petrochemicals, was also targeted. He had long been blacklisted by the US Treasury for his contributions to peaceful nuclear research.

Amir-Hussein Faghhi, a 45-year-old professor specializing in nuclear medical applications and radio-pharmaceuticals, served as chair of the Nuclear Science and Technology Institute. He was widely regarded as the heir to Shahriyari’s scientific legacy. Faghhi’s colleague Ahmadreza Zolfaghari Dariani, another physicist from Shaheed Beheshti University and a member of Iran’s nuclear oversight committee, was also killed, along with his entire family.

Other victims included Mansour Asgari, a nuclear reactor engineer and war veteran, whose field of work was mainly Advanced Materials and nuclear reactors. He was among the scientists targeted in the first phase of Israeli air raids when he lost his life, alongside his wife, his daughter – a gynecologist – and his granddaughter.

Ali Bakouei Katirimi, a molecular physics expert at Tarbiyat Moddaress University, was killed, as was Seyed Issar Tabatabaei Ghomsheh, a metallurgy specialist from Sharif University of Technology, whose work had been kept classified due to constant Israeli threats.

Also assassinated was Seyyed Asghar Hashemi-Tabar, a missile program expert with a PhD from Iran’s National Defense University. He had been named in International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-linked reports as contributing to the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program.

Mohammadreza Sediqi Saber, an energetic materials expert from Malek Ashtar University, initially survived an Israeli strike that killed his son. He and 13 of his relatives were killed in a second targeted attack days later.

Among the other scientists assassinated was Soleiman Soleimani, a chemical engineering expert from the Iran University of Science and Technology. According to the ISNA news agency, he was affiliated with the Defense Ministry’s SPND, making him a likely high-priority target. 

Also killed was Seyed Mostafa Sadat Armaki, a professor specializing in nuclear instrumentation and electrical accelerators, who died along with his wife, three children, and in-laws in a direct strike on their residence. Ali Bokaei Karimi, identified by The Cradle as an associate professor of electronic engineering at the University of Kashan, was among those murdered in the Israeli strikes on that city. The attack on Kashan claimed at least 23 lives, 15 of whom were members of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force.

Alireza Zeinali, a metallurgy expert, was killed alongside his two daughters, while Mohammadreza Zakerian, a young researcher hailed by Iran’s Ministry of Science as a leading AI and technology specialist, was assassinated along with his wife and two children.

The IAEA’s role and western complicity

Iranian experts and security officials have long warned of the IAEA’s role in exposing its scientists. According to Mehdi Khanalizadeh, an international affairs expert interviewed by The Cradle, the IAEA holds detailed records of Iran’s nuclear personnel – data that may have been shared, directly or indirectly, with Israeli intelligence. This suspicion has deep roots.

In 2018, students at Shaheed Beheshti University protested an IAEA visit, denouncing inspectors as spies. Four of the professors who hosted that inspection were later assassinated. For Professor Ali-Akbar Mottakan of Shaheed Beheshti University, the threat of renewed IAEA access weighed heavily on his colleagues, asserting, “They all were worried that the IAEA would inspect the Faculty of Nuclear Engineering again, asserting they are spies.”

International relations expert Mehdi Khanalizadeh shares a darker assessment with The Cradle:

“The IAEA has official reports about every single scientist related to Iran’s nuclear program … The agency had the names of all martyrs who were working with the Defense Ministry, too.” 

He also points to another source of exposure: Israel’s now-famous January 2018 operation, in which Mossad agents stormed a Defense Ministry warehouse in Shourabad, southwest Tehran. The Israeli team killed at least two guards and exfiltrated over 100,000 sensitive documents – including detailed information on the Fordow nuclear facility and lists of personnel. Just two months later, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu went live on television to showcase the stolen archive and publicly revealed, for the first time, the image of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. 

The Wisconsin-based watchdog Iran Watch later cited one of those IAEA files to accuse scientist Asghar Hashemi-Tabar of being “associated with the possible military dimension of the Iranian nuclear program.”

Breaches from within

While foreign espionage played the decisive role, Iran’s internal security failures deepened the crisis. Personal data of several scientists was accessible online or leaked carelessly. In 2021, following a student dispute at Islamic Azad University, the names and details of President Tehranchi’s bodyguards were published on social media. The leak, dismissed by the Supreme National Security Council, was described by university officials as espionage.

Further breaches occurred through commercial registries and hacked databases. In one case, a man located Fereydoun Abbasi’s address and national ID through a business information site and hacked court documents. The platform went offline shortly after the video went viral.

A 2021 video by Tasnim News, a media outlet close to the IRGC, featured Amir-Hussein Faghhi discussing his mentor, Majid Shahriyari, in detail. That video resurfaced after Faghhi’s assassination.

Despite attempts to anonymize nuclear-related faculty members – such as removing names from university websites – decades of Mossad infiltration and years of official negligence left Iran’s scientific corps vulnerable.

Claims about direct foreign infiltration have not been rejected either, especially after the arrest of an Iranian physician and expert in disaster medicine by government intel services in 2016. Ahmadreza Jalali was convicted of leaking information on some nuclear scientists to the Mossad during his years of cooperation with Iran’s Defense Ministry. His leaks led to the assassination of Majid Shariyari and Masoud Ali-Mohammadi in 2010. Jalali was arrested six years later, and sentenced to death.

From covert ops to open warfare

Over a 14-year period, beginning in January 2006 with the assassination of nuclear scientist Ardeshir Hossein-pour, and ending with the high-profile killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020, Israel eliminated six key Iranian scientists using car bombs, magnetic explosives, and remote-controlled attacks.

In just twelve days in 2025, the occupation state killed at least 17 more. The message was clear: Tel Aviv no longer hides behind plausible deniability. The covert war is now overt.

Iranian officials insist these assassinations will not derail their progress. Yet the scale of the losses is undeniable. In response, on 2 July, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed into law a bill halting cooperation with the IAEA and barring inspectors from accessing nuclear sites or scientists.

But the damage is done. Israel has proved it can strike not just Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but the minds behind it. If Tehran fails to radically revise its security protocols, it may soon face another generation of martyrs – this time not on the battlefield, but in laboratories, lecture halls, and homes.