Israel has killed at least 14 Iranian scientists, dealing a significant blow to Iran’s nuclear program, an official told The Associated Press (AP).
Israel’s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, said in a Monday interview that Israeli strikes have killed at least 14 leading Iranian physicists and nuclear engineers — scientific leaders who “basically had everything in their mind,” according to the the outlet.
He said the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would make it “almost” impossible for Iran to develop weapons from any remaining nuclear infrastructure or material. This follows nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and bunker-busting bombs deployed Saturday using U.S. stealth bombers. (RELATED: ‘They Don’t Know What The F*ck They’re Doing’: Trump Unloads On Iran, Israel)
“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 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 ambassador continued.
Israel took out nine scientists with its first wave of strikes on June 13, according to the IDF. The military said the Iranian scientists “possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons,” with specializations covering chemistry, physics, materials and explosives.
Iranian state TV announced on Tuesday that a recent Israeli strike killed Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, an Iranian nuclear scientist who had previously survived a June 13 attack that left his 17-year-old son dead, according to the AP.
Israel kills at least 14 scientists behind Iran’s nuclear program https://t.co/2KBCbNTT7U pic.twitter.com/XFgsQJchJ8
— New York Post (@nypost) June 24, 2025
Nuclear analysts have noted that Iran still has other scientists who could replace those lost, the outlet reported. European officials have said that military action won’t eliminate Iran’s nuclear expertise by itself and have pushed for a negotiated settlement to address concerns about the program. (RELATED: Vance Flags Iran’s Nuke Risk As ‘Very Close’)
Israel reportedly smuggled missile and drone parts into Iran before launching strikes on the Islamic Republic’s military, energy and nuclear sites, killing several commanders and nuclear scientists.
“It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach; there is no denying this,” senior adviser to Iranian Speaker of Parliament Mahdi Mohammadi said in an audio recording, according to The New York Times (NYT). “Our senior commanders were all assassinated within one hour.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, submitted three senior Islamic clerics’ names to the Assembly of Experts as potential successors, three Iranian officials previously told the NYT. This reportedly signaled his concern that he could be assassinated amid the conflict with Israel.
He also named new military leaders to prevent a power vacuum following Israeli strikes that killed top commanders, including Mohammad Bagheri and Gholamali Rashid, the commander-in-chief and deputy commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces respectively.
Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, rumored as a potential replacement for his father, was not among the three candidates, the officials said.
