Iran calls for Israel to be 'punished'

"Terrorism has a long history in some countries like the Zionist regime," senior Iranian official Larijani says; demands retribution for assassination of nuclear scientists attributed to Israel.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Larijani_311 (photo credit: Reuters/Caren Firouz )
Iranian Parliament Speaker Larijani_311
(photo credit: Reuters/Caren Firouz )
An ally of Iran's supreme leader called on Friday for Israel to be "punished" for its alleged role in killing an Iranian nuclear scientist last week.
After Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei paid his respects to the families of two scientists assassinated on what Tehran believes were Israel's orders, one of them just last week, a close ally who is a former nuclear negotiator and currently speaker of parliament demanded retribution.
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"Terrorism has a long history in some countries like the Zionist regime," Ali Larijani said of nuclear-armed Israel, which views an atomic bomb in the hands of the Islamic Republic as a threat to the survival of the Jewish state.
"The Zionist regime should be punished in a way that it can not play such games with our country again."
Such threats have been made before in Tehran and it is unclear how or when they might be carried out. Israel is on guard against attacks on its borders and within, notably by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which is supported by Iran.
Israeli officials have not commented on accusations that it deployed the hit squad which blew up Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan on a busy Tehran street last week. But it has a record of such attacks and is widely presumed by Western analysts to be engaged, along with allies, in a covert war against a nuclear development program which Iran insists is entirely civilian.
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