The United States rejected as "absurd" an allegation by Tehran that Washington had a hand in a bomb attack that killed an Iranian nuclear scientist, a State Department spokesman said on Tuesday as mystery surrounded the death of the opposition supporter.
"Charges of U.S. involvement are absurd," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, after Iran's foreign ministry accused U.S. and Israeli "mercenaries" of being behind the bomb plot.
Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at prestigious Tehran University, died when a bomb strapped to a parked motorcycle was triggered by remote control outside his home in northern Tehran, state media said.
Tehran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted in Iranian media as seeing "signs of evilness by the triangle of the Zionist regime, America and their mercenaries in Iran in this terrorist incident."
He vowed that Iran would not be deterred from its nuclear efforts, however.
"Such terrorist acts and the physical elimination of the country's nuclear scientists will certainly not stop the scientific and technological process but will speed it up," he said.
Iran's chief prosecutor also implicated U.S. and Israeli intelligence services in the bombing that killed nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi.
Bomb attacks are rare in Iran although several security officials and members of the elite Revolutionary Guards have been killed in bombings by rebels in restive Sistan-Baluchestan province in eastern Iran.
Blaming arch foes
This assassination may have been carried out by the Hypocrites or planned by the Zionist regime
Iran's state-run Arabic-language TV Al-Alam identified Mohammadi as a "hezbollahi" teacher -- a term used for staunch supporters of the Iranian regime.
"This assassination may have been carried out by the Hypocrites (Iran's exiled People's Mujahedeen opposition) or planned by the Zionist regime," Al-Alam said.
Iranian authorities have consistently accused arch foes the United States and Israel of seeking to foment unrest in Iran.
Hardliners have also accused the People's Mujahedeen of infiltrating anti-government protests and carrying out attacks.
None of the reports said whether Mohammadi was connected to Iran's controversial nuclear program, which the West suspects is masking an atomic weapons program.
Baha'i trials
Meanwhile seven members of the Baha'i group went on trial on charges of spying and collaborating with Israel in an effort to damage national security.
Iran had previously said the group, arrested in 2008, had received orders from Israel to take measures against the Islamic system.
Iran and Israel have been enemies since Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 and analysts say Israel could carry out military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites over fears that its energy program could be used to produce atomic weapons. Israel is possess the Middle East's a nuclear arsenal.
The Baha'i International Community, which represents the faith worldwide, has denied the charges against the group, saying they were members of a committee that tends to the needs of minority Baha'is in Iran.
Students news agency ISNA said the court listed the charges against the Baha'is, whom it did not identify, as including espionage, gathering classified information, communicating news to foreign embassies, acting against domestic security, setting up illegal organizations and collaboration with Israel.
Such espionage charges could carry the death sentence.
"The charge against the seven Baha'is is acting against national security," Tehran general prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.
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