Official media and regime hardliners reacted to Tuesday's deadly bombing by calling the victim "a revolutionary teacher who was martyred," state television reported, while Tehran-funded Arabic channel Al-Alam called him a "Hezbollahi professor."

Both outlets accused Iran's arch-foes the United States and Israel of having ordered the attack on a top scientist involved in Iran's nuclear programme which world powers fear could be a covert military programme.

Tehran vehemently denies that charge.

In support of this thesis, people close to Ali Mohammadi stressed his close links with the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), where he seems to have worked for more than 20 years until 2003.

According to a statement from the Basij, Iran's islamic militia, he also taught at the IRGC's Imam Hossein University in Tehran. The Basij, which comes under IRGC command, labelled him a "Basiji teacher."

The Iranian opposition in exile describes Imam Hossein University as one of the facilities working on a military nuclear programme that Tehran has always said does not exist.

Basij students at Tehran University have said that Ali Mohammadi's name is on a "list of persons subject to international sanctions" for their alleged role in Iran's nuclear programme.

But anti-government opposition groups say that although there is ample evidence that Ali Mohammadi used to be a hardline revolutionary, he switched allegiance some time ago.

Several opposition sites said that Ali Mohammadi was among the academics whose name appeared in a June letter supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential election candidate and current opposition leader.

He also signed a letter from Tehran University academics condemning the "immoral and illegal" repression of student protests after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, opposition website Rahesabz said, posting a copy of the letter.

"Massoud (Ali Mohammadi) was among the forces loyal to the Islamic revolution and Imam Khomeini," said colleague Ahmad Shirzad, a former reformist MP and nuclear physics professor, in a letter published by Rahesabz and the reformist daily Aftab.

"These past two years, he approached the reform movement. In the last election he supported the reformist candidate (Mousavi) and sent out mobile text messages," Shirzad said.

"After June 15's opposition rally, he told me that his students had asked if they should participate, and that he had replied: 'I do not know what our duty is, but I personally will be there,' and then his students gave him a standing ovation."

However, according to Ali Moghara, who heads the physics faculty at Tehran University, Ali Mohammadi was just a "world famous" physicist who engaged in "no political activity."

"Massoud taught theoretical physics, wrote articles and did not have much time to rest," confirmed one of the murdered scientist's childhood friends, the film-maker Shahabeddin Farrokhyar, on the moderate Ayandenews website.

"But the disregard and disrespect of the authorities towards the university and students broke him" emotionally, said Farrokhyar, adding that his friend had "a photo of (former reformist president) Mohammad Khatami on his desk."

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