Israel’s recent military campaign against Iran reportedly involved the targeted killings of at least 14 senior Iranian nuclear scientists -- a move Israeli officials describe as a direct blow to the core of Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.
According to Israel’s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, the operation aimed to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities by eliminating key figures driving its development.
The disclosure, made in an interview with the Associated Press (AP), is being viewed as an unprecedented escalation in Israel’s efforts to halt Iran’s atomic ambitions.
Speaking to AP, Zarka said the scientists were targeted not for their knowledge alone but for their active roles, he said, "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."
"The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years," Zarka told AP.
He added, “I do think that people that will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it.”
According to Israeli military officials cited by AP, nine of the 14 scientists were killed in the initial wave of Israeli strikes on June 13. Those killed reportedly included physicists, chemists, materials scientists, explosives experts, and engineers who, according to Israel, had decades of accumulated experience in nuclear weapons development.
Scientists killed were actively working on bomb, says Israel
“They were killed not because of the fact that they knew physics, but because of the fight that they were personally involved in,” Zarka said. He added that these individuals were critical to the production and future advancement of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation plans.
Zarka distinguished between theoretical nuclear science and the practical steps involved in weaponising nuclear materials. “It’s one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium. 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.”
Analysts say know-how can be regenerated
Despite the scale of the strike, analysts caution that while the killings may delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions, they cannot erase decades of accumulated knowledge.
“Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of Ph.D. students will be able to figure it out,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US diplomat and now a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“Bombing nuclear facilities or killing the people will set it back some period of time. Doing both will set it back further, but it will be reconstituted,” Fitzpatrick added.
Fitzpatrick noted that while the top tier of experts may be gone, Iran likely still has a secondary layer of qualified scientists who can step in. “They have substitutes in maybe the next league down, and they’re not as highly qualified, but they will get the job done eventually,” he said.
European powers call for diplomatic resolution
European officials have echoed similar views, warning that military action alone cannot destroy nuclear knowledge. In a statement to the House of Commons, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said, “Strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon.”
The prevailing view among European governments, according to AP, is that only a negotiated diplomatic solution can fully address the world’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme.
A history of covert strikes and sabotage
While Israel has long been suspected of carrying out assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, it has rarely acknowledged such actions publicly. The latest strikes mark a significant departure, with Israeli officials openly confirming the targeted killings.
In 2020, Iran accused Israel of assassinating its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, using a remote-controlled weapon. Israel did not claim responsibility at the time. Zarka did not directly confirm that Israel was behind Fakhrizadeh’s death, but said: “Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago” if not for repeated setbacks, including accidents and sabotage, many of which Tehran has blamed on Israel.
“They have not reached the bomb yet,” Zarka added. “Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program.”
Legal questions loom over scientist killings
The legality of such targeted killings remains contested. International humanitarian law prohibits the deliberate killing of civilians and non-combatants, but some legal scholars argue that nuclear scientists may not be protected under such laws if they are directly participating in hostilities or connected to Iran’s armed forces.
“My own take: These scientists were working for a rogue regime that has consistently called for the elimination of Israel, helping it to develop weapons that will allow that threat to take place. As such, they are legitimate targets,” said Steven R. David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
David compared the situation to World War II, saying Nazi and Japanese leaders would have targeted scientists working on the Manhattan Project had they had the opportunity.
However, other legal experts urged caution. “As external observers, we don’t have all the relevant facts about the nature of the scientists’ role and activities or the intelligence that Israel has,” said Laurie Blank, a humanitarian law specialist at Emory Law School, in an email to AP. “As a result, it is not possible to make any definitive conclusions.”
Geneva-based nuclear analyst Pavel Podvig also raised ethical and strategic concerns: “The key element is the material. So once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known,” he said. “Then the questions are, ‘Where do you stop?’ I mean you start killing, like, students who study physics? This is a very slippery slope.”