Akbar Motalebizadeh

Akbar Motalebizadeh (23 July 1963 – 13 June 2025)^[1] was an Iranian nuclear scientist; and a faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University and a physics instructor at Yazd Islamic Azad University. He was killed in june 2025 during the Israeli attacks on Iran. He served for many years as the head of the Shahid Karimi Group, a subsidiary of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Organization.^[2]

Akbar Motalebizadeh
اکبر مطلبی زاده
Born	(1963-07-23)23 July 1963 Yazd, Imperial State of Iran
Died	13 June 2025(2025-06-13) (aged 61) Tehran, Iran
Cause of death	Assassinated by Israel
Nationality	Iranian
Education	Nuclear Engineering (Energy Focus)
Alma mater	Amirkabir University of Technology
Occupation	Nuclear Engineering
Known for	Iranian prominent nuclear engineering

The US Treasury Department sanctioned him in March 2019. According to the Department, he worked in areas such as research related to weapons systems, explosives, and shock and explosion tests, and supervised the implementation of projects with military applications in the Shahid Karimi Group and served as a personal advisor to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, then head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Organization.^[3][4]

Death

See also: Iran–Israel war and List of attacks during the Iran–Israel war

Motalebizadeh was killed in June 2025 during Israeli attacks on Iran at the start of the Iran–Israel war. He was buried in Yazd.^[5][6][7][8]

See also

• Targeted killings by Israel
• Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists