Report: Mossad recruits Iranian dissidents

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JERUSALEM, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Israeli intelligence agents are recruiting and training Iranian dissidents from Iraq's Kurdish region to work against Iran's regime, a French newspaper reports.

Le Figaro, quoting security sources in Baghdad, said Wednesday Israeli Mossad intelligence agents are operating in Kurdistan, where they are recruiting Iranian exiles, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Foreign media have previously reported Mossad had been recruiting Iranians opposed to the regime in Tehran and used them to carry out bombings, Haaretz noted.

An Iranian official blamed Israel for a bombing in Tehran Wednesday that killed an Iranian nuclear scientist, the Fars News Agency reported.

Witnesses, the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars reported, said a motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb on the side of a car and it exploded. The bombing killed the nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who supervised a department at Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, and wounded two others, Fars said.

Deputy Gov. Safarali Baratloo blamed Israel for the bombing.

"The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists [Israelis]," Baratloo said.

The attack came on the second anniversary of an explosion that killed senior Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, Haaretz said, and several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for the killings, a claim both countries deny.

Western countries have tightened sanctions on Iran amid concerns the country is working to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran, however, says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposed.