Iran received information days ago that Israeli and U.S. intelligence intended to carry out terrorist acts in Tehran, the country's parliament speaker said on Wednesday, one day after the assassination of a university scientist.

Washington has rejected Iran's allegations of U.S. involvement in Tuesday's bombing that killed professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi near his home in the Iranian capital as absurd. Israel has not commented on the incident.

Mohammadi was killed in a powerful bomb blast as he was leaving home in northern Tehran for work.

Iranian officials and state media described the slain scientist as a nuclear physicist, but a spokesman said he did not work for the Atomic Energy Organization at the center of Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Iran's influential parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said a U.S.-based pro-monarchy group had claimed responsibility for the attack, adding it was controlled by the CIA. Iran's Fars News Agency on Tuesday said such an exile group had claimed the bombing in a statement, without saying how it obtained it.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142366.html