A mysterious remote-control bomb killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist today, Arutz 7 reports.
Iran’s Government confirmed that the victim, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, was a lecturer in nuclear energy and that he was a senior nuclear scientist. No suspects in the killing have been arrested.
It is not known if he was directly involved in developing Iran’s nuclear facilties, but Government media stated that he was a “staunch supporter” of the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The car of one of Iran’s opposition leader, Mahdi Karroubi, was hit by gunfire in the northern town of Qazvin, al-Jazeera reports.
Karroubi, a reformist candidate in last June’s disputed presidential election, was visiting Qazvin to attend a mourning ceremony for opposition protesters when he was attacked. The car was shot at when Karroubi was leaving the ceremony, but it was an armoured car, so only the windows were damaged.
Karroubi was uninjured in the attack.
The attackers …

British troops in southern Iraq were scrambled to the Iranian border after the abduction of five British hostages in May 2007, in a failed attempt to stop them being taken into Iran, the Guardian reports.
The troops were sent to the border area north of Basra to intercept the kidnappers after receiving intelligence that they were heading to the frontier from Baghdad, but failed to find them. It is unclear whether the British unit arrived too …

Iran has banned its citizens from having contact with 60 organizations including the BBC, Human Rights Watch and opposition website Rahesabz as well as US-funded broadcasters, Ynet reports.
Iran#s deputy intelligence minister in charge of external affairs said that the 60 blacklisted groups were suspected of being involved in efforts by Western governments to topple the Islamic regime as part of a “soft war” and that it was an offence to communicate with them.
“Any kind of …

Iran arrested several foreign nationals during the anti-Government demonstrations last week, the BBC reports.
Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said that those detained had been “pursuing propaganda and psychological warfare”. He did not give their nationalities.
Some 300 of the 500 people arrested remain in detention after mass protests in Tehran on 27th December during the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura. At least eight people were killed in a crackdown on anti-Government protests.
The late December demonstrations were …

Former US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus is absolutely certain that British kidnap victim Peter Moore was held secretly in Iran for part of his 31-month kidnap ordeal, The Times reports.
General Petraeus’s claim that the British IT consultant was held captive in Iran is likely to intensify the bitter diplomatic relationship between London and Tehran.
Moore was set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of …

The leader of Iran’s opposition, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has fled Tehran, The Times reports.
Mousavi, defeated in hotly disputed elections in June, left the Iranian capital on a day marked by pro-government rallies at which crowds chanted “Death to Mousavi”. Another of the leaders, Mahdi Karroubi, are also said to have fled.
The news comes three days after Mousavi’s nephew Ali was killed during a protest against the regime in which at least eight lost their lives.

Iran’s Government vented their anger at Britain last night, declaring that London deserved a “punch in the mouth” for its role as the “chief culprit” behind the mass protests sweeping the Islamic Republic, the Independent reports.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei further upped the ante at home, branding senior opposition members “enemies of God” who deserved to be executed. And in what human rights groups and diplomats described as another “ominous development”, Iranian police told …

At least 15 people were killed during massive anti-government protests in Tehran when opposition supporters clashed with security forces in the streets, Iran’s Government blame West for the violence.
10 people were killed during Sunday’s fierce clashes in the Iranian capital were members of “anti-revolutionary terrorist” groups, according to state television, apparently referring to opposition supporters, Fox News reports. The other five who died were killed by “terrorist groups” in a “suspicious act,” TV said, without …

According to a new survey, Iran’s nuclear threat to regional security has replaced Israel as the Arab world’s public enemy number one for the Arab world, Arutz 7 reports.
A majority of respondents from 18 Arab countries said Iran is a bigger threat than Israel, and nearly a third think that Tehran is just as likely to target them as Israel. However, an overwhelming 80 per cent do not believe that Iran is trying to build …

Iranian senior cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, died on Sunday at the age of 87, alalam.ir reports.
Montazeri had been designated to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, but the two had a falling out a few months before Khomeini died of cancer in 1989.
Then he served as a professor at Hawza (Theologian School) in the holy city of Qom and became a dissident of the Government.
According to Ynet, hundreds …

Twitter suffered a hack attack overnight, with its web pages redirecting to a site for the “Iranian Cyber Army”, Wall Street Journal reports.
Twitter later posted an update that said its domain name records “were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed” and promised another update “once we’ve investigated more fully”.
Iranian reformist website Mowjcamp also appeared to be hacked by the same group.
According to Techradar, users of Twitter were unable to log on to the …

Iran has successfully tested “an upgraded version” of its longest-range, solid-fuel missile, Fox News reports.
State television broke the news in a one-sentence report that gave no details on the test of the Sajjil-2 missile, a high-speed, surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 1,200 miles.
That range places Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, well within reach and reaches as far away as southeastern Europe with greater precision than earlier models.
Iran has intensified its missile development program in …

The United States said that revelations that Iran has been working secretly on a trigger for a nuclear bomb urgently underscore the case for tough new sanctions against Tehran, The Times reports.
Referring to a report in The Times yesterday, which suggested that Iran has been working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb, a senior US official said: “Now that work may have been done on a trigger mechanism, this certainly gives …

According to Amnesty International, human rights violations in Iran are the worst in 20 years, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Amnesty’s report describes patterns of abuse before, during and after the June election and includes various testimonies and case studies. The report also urges Iranian leadership to allow two key UN human rights experts to visit Iran and help the investigation.
“The Iranian leadership must ensure that the many allegations of torture, including rape, unlawful killings and other …

Dozens of Iranian Government agents on motorbikes have surrounded the Tehran office of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and the country’s chief prosecutor is threatening to arrest him, The Times reports.
The moves come just one day after tens of thousands of students across the country staged the latest in a long series of demonstrations against the Government the so-called “Green” movement regards as illegitimate.
Mousavi is the former Prime Minister who was defeated by President Mahmoud …