Iran Suspects Israel Killed Two Scientists With Poison

If Iran’s suspicions about the deaths are confirmed, these would be the latest killings in a shadow war that is reaching new intensity as Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons capability.

Iran Suspects Israel Killed Two Scientists With Poison

NY Times- June 13th 2022

By Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman

They both graduated from Iran’s top universities — young, healthy and athletic — before they suddenly fell ill in late May. The two scientists grew sicker and sicker, and ended up in the intensive care units of hospitals in two different cities nearly 400 miles apart.

Then, they both died within days of each other.

Iran believes Israel killed them by poisoning their food, according to an Iranian official and two other people with ties to the government who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. One of them, Ayoub Entezari, was an aeronautical engineer who worked for a military research center, and the other, Kamran Aghamolaei, was a geologist.

Compounding the mystery behind their deaths, Israeli media and Persian news channels abroad reported that Mr. Aghamolaei worked at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. But friends denied that, and said he worked for a private geological research company, and The New York Times could not corroborate that he had any ties to the government or any weapons program.

Mr. Entezari had a doctorate in aeronautics and worked on projects related to missiles and airplane turbines for a government aerospace center in the city of Yazd, about 390 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran.

Now that shadow war appears to be intensifying. In the past two weeks alone, a series of deaths linked to Israel have rattled Iran. Israel appears to have broadened its targets from senior figures connected to the nuclear program to military personnel and lower level scientists.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on the two recent deaths inside Iran.

He developed symptoms of food poisoning after attending a dinner he was invited to in Yazd, according to a staff member of a senior Iranian official. The host of the dinner party had disappeared and authorities were searching for him, according to the staff member, who could not be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Aghamolaei had just returned to Tehran from a business trip to the northwestern city of Tabriz when he developed intense nausea and diarrhea that worsened day by day until his organs failed and he died, according to a friend.

If, as Iran suspects, these mysteriously similar deaths were targeted killings, it would fit the pattern of a shadow war with Israel that has seen both sides strike each other with just enough secrecy to avoid a full blown war.