Israel killed at least 14 Iranian scientists in an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran’s nuclear program, Israel\u2019s ambassador to France Joshua Zarka said earlier this week. He also explained why these scientists were killed.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Zarka told the Associated Press on Monday that Israeli strikes <\/a>killed at least 14 physicists and nuclear engineers, top Iranian scientific leaders who \u201cbasically had everything in their mind.\u201d<\/p>\n They were killed \u201cnot because of the fact that they knew physics, but because of the fight that they were personally involved in, the creation and the fabrication and the production of (a) nuclear weapon,” he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But turning uranium into warheads<\/a> that fit onto missiles is \u201cnot that simple,\u201d he said. “These people had the know-how of doing it, and were developing the know-how of doing it further. And this is why they were eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n Chemists, physicists, engineers among those killed<\/p>\n Nine of the 14 scientists were killed in Israel’s opening wave of attacks on June 13, the Israeli military said.<\/p>\n It added that they \u201cpossessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons\u201d and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Iran state TV reported the death of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, in an Israeli strike, after he’d survived an earlier attack that killed his 17-year-old son on June 13.<\/p>\n Will Israeli attacks hamper Iran’s nuclear program?<\/p>\n In an interview with The Associated Press, Israel\u2019s ambassador claimed that the killings will make it \u201calmost” impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure <\/a>and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by US stealth bombers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the [Iran’s nuclear<\/a>] program by a number of years, by quite a number of years,” Ambassador Joshua Zarka said.<\/p>\n But nuclear analysts say Iran has other scientists who can take their place. According to AP, experts contend that such attacks can only set back Iran’s nuclear program but not stop it.<\/p>\n ‘Negotiated solution’<\/p>\n