A number of people were very well familiar with Martyr Shahriyari prior to his attaining martyrdom. These were the people who knew that achieving twenty percent uranium enrichment and many of Iran’s other advancements in the field of nuclear science were due in large part to his efforts and that if a day were to come where he were not present or active in the field, the pace of this progress would slow down significantly.

The people who knew full well the importance of Martyr Shahriyari were many, and included the Prime Minister of the Zionist Regime and the heads of the Mossad and CIA, down to the motorcycle rider who attached the bomb to the glass side-panel of Shahriyari’s automobile.

These were the same people who claimed that the assassination of Martyr Shahriyari was a form of unconventional warfare whose purpose was to stop Iran’s progress… the people who sighed in relef relief upon hearing the news of his martyrdom.

 

On the other hand, there were also those who caught their breath when they heard of his martyrdom, and released it only after the news of the tragedy sunk in, after which they were able to resume their breathing, but only in sobs and accompanied by a flood of tears.

 

The book before you is a collection of recollections from this second group of people on Dr. Shahriyari’s life. This collection has been compiled for the benefit of a third group of people who have only come to know him after his martyrdom.

 

The names of his colleagues and students have been eliminated from the text for their own protection.

The content of this book originally appeared in a series of five installments in special supplements of Rāh, a monthly periodical.

Martyr Mahdi Shahriyari was born in Zanjan, Iran, in 1966. He was a nuclear engineer who worked with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on nuclear medicine in addition to his full-time position as a full professor of Nuclear Engineering sy Shahid Beheshti University. On November 29, 2010, unidentified assailants riding motorcycles launched separate bomb attacks, killing Martyr Shahriyari and injuring nuclear scientist Fereydun Abbasi, another professor at Shahid Beheshti University. The killers had attached bombs to the professors’ cars and detonated them from a distance by remote control. Dr. Shahriyari was one of the two Iranian members of the International Center for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science Applications in the Middle East, together with Dr. Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, another scientist who was assassinated.