When Israel’s attacks on Iran began before dawn on June 13, 2025 explosions shattered the homes of some of Iran’s top scientists… All nine were killed in near-simultaneous attacks to prevent them from going into hiding…The attack on the scientists was considered so fantastical by even its planners that it was called “Operation Narnia,” after the fictional C.S. Lewis series…A week after the June 13 attacks, Israel used a drone to kill another scientist who was being kept in what was supposed to be a safe house in Tehran. The person hasn’t been named…The deadly airstrikes were the first to target Iran’s nuclear scientists since 2020, when Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down with a remote-controlled weapon. Israel has never denied or confirmed its role in the deaths of five Iranian scientists between 2010 and 2020.
Among the most important targets was Fereydoon Abbasi-Devani, the former head of the Atomic Agency of Iran and one of the founders of Iran’s nuclear weapons-related work…Another killed scientist was Mohammad Mehdi Teranchi, who led a unit under Fakhrizadeh focusing on high explosives, which are needed to detonate a nuclear weapon…
Iran has used universities like Shahid Beheshti, the Sharif University of Technology and Malek Ashtar University to keep alive its nuclear-weapons expertise over the past two decades….At these universities, Iran often matches up its nuclear scientists on experiments and other studies with younger students. Two of the scientists killed on June 13, Ahmadreza Zolfaghari and Abdulhamid Minouchehr, published an article in the Annals of Nuclear Energy in June 2024 that used advanced computer modeling to show how neutron sources behave in a chain reaction. That information can be used for civilian purposes, like building a nuclear reactor, or to help trigger a chain reaction in a nuclear weapon.
Excerpt from Laurence Norman, How Israel Killed Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientists, WSJ, June 29, 2025
Law-In-Action 