Israel killed at least 14 Iranian scientists ‘not because they knew physics but...’: Israeli envoy to France

Israel killed at least 14 Iranian scientists in an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran's nuclear program, Israel’s ambassador to France Joshua Zarka said earlier this week. He also explained why these scientists were killed.

Ambassador Zarka told the Associated Press on Monday that Israeli strikes killed at least 14 physicists and nuclear engineers, top Iranian scientific leaders who “basically had everything in their mind.”

They were killed “not 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.

Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel. “It’s one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium,” he said.

But turning uranium into warheads that fit onto missiles is “not that simple,” 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.”

Chemists, physicists, engineers among those killed

Nine of the 14 scientists were killed in Israel's opening wave of attacks on June 13, the Israeli military said.

It added that they “possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons” and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists.

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.

Will Israeli attacks hamper Iran's nuclear program?

In an interview with The Associated Press, Israel’s ambassador claimed that the killings will make it “almost" impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by US stealth bombers.

“The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the [Iran's nuclear] program by a number of years, by quite a number of years," Ambassador Joshua Zarka said.

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.

'Negotiated solution'

European governments reportedly said that military force alone cannot eradicate Iran's nuclear know-how, which is why they want a negotiated solution to put concerns about the Iranian program to rest.

“Strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon," UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program was peaceful, and US intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.