According to a report by Iran's Farsi news agency, the Mossad could not have been behind the death of one of its nuclear scientists three weeks ago, because Israeli operatives cannot penetrate the Iranian security apparatus.

An unnamed Iranian official was quoted as saying "None of the Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated by the Mossad because the Israeli intelligence agency is basically incapable of running operations inside of Iran."

The Iranian dismissal of the Mossad's capabilities came in response to a report in the Sunday Times of London that attributed the death of nuclear scientist Ardshir Hosseinpour to a Mossad assassination. The official Iranian position on the death of Hosseinpour, a professor at Shiraz University, is that he was killed by fumes from a faulty gas burner while he slept, and that his death was in no way connected to his role at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, where uranium hexafluride is produced from uranium ore.

In a week when the Mossad's operations has been a reoccurring story line in the press, the Iranians are taking the opportunity to paint a negative image of the agency in the Arab world, while minimizing its capabilities.

The denigrations do not end there. The unnamed Iranian official continued to attack the Mossad, criticizing the role it plays in protecting the home front, saying Israeli intelligence is powerless to solve the crisis facing the "Zionist regime," and adding, "If the Mossad was capable of doing great things, it should have solved the domestic crisis of Israel."

"The United States and Israel have repeatedly come under deep criticism from Western politicians and experts for their weaknesses in collecting correct information about Iran's capabilities," he said. The report in the Sunday Times was merely propaganda in the war for international superiority, he said.