The IDF said nine Iranian nuclear scientists were killed in Israeli strikes on Tehran during the opening hours of Operation Rising Lion on June 13, 2025. The military attributed their identification to intelligence research conducted over several years.
Who Israel said was targeted
On June 14, the IDF named Fereydoon Abbasi, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, Akbar Motalebi Zadeh, Saeed Barji, Amir Hassan Fakhahi, Abd al-Hamid Minoushehr, Mansour Asgari, Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari Daryani and Ali Bakhouei Katirimi. The military described them as specialists in fields including nuclear engineering, physics, chemistry, materials, reactor physics and mechanics. The Times of Israel report lists the nine scientists and their fields.
The IDF said the scientists had accumulated decades of experience in Iran’s nuclear project and that many had succeeded Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior figure in Iran’s nuclear program who was killed in 2020. The 2025 strikes in Tehran killed the scientists alongside senior military commanders. The IDF described their work as advancing Iran’s nuclear efforts.
How Israel tracked the scientists
The IDF described a classified, compartmented effort in which dozens of intelligence researchers tracked key scientists over several years. Research intensified in the year before the operation. Israel has not released the specific units and methods used to locate each person.
Earlier operations targeting Iran’s nuclear program included the 2020 killing of Fakhrizadeh and sabotage at nuclear facilities. The IDF’s June 2025 account focused on the scientists and the intelligence effort to identify them.
Why the targeting mattered
Targeting experienced specialists can remove accumulated expertise and disrupt teams working on a technical program. The IAEA’s pre-strike concern centered on unresolved safeguards questions and uranium enrichment. Its May 2025 safeguards report described unresolved questions about nuclear material and said it had no credible indication of an ongoing undeclared structured program of the kind it described for the early 2000s.
For the broader opening attack, including the commanders killed and military targets struck, see Operation Rising Lion. The later US attack on hardened nuclear facilities is covered in Operation Midnight Hammer.