VIENNA: Iran will not retaliate against its enemies who killed Iranian nuclear scientists but wants international action to help prevent further attacks, its envoy to the UN atomic agency said on Tuesday.

Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh called the assassinations, which Tehran blames on Israel and other foes, a “crime against humanity” at an Iranian-organised media event in Vienna where the wife of one of the killed experts also spoke.

“We want not only our scientists, we want all scientists of the whole world, to be protected,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an annual member state gathering of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But, Soltanieh said, “the Islamic Republic of Iran is not going to retaliate.”

In July, university lecturer Darioush Rezaie was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran, the third murder of a scientist since 2009. One was killed in a car bomb, the second by a device detonated remotely.

Iran has said the attacks were the work of enemies that wished to deny it the right to develop nuclear technology which it says is aimed at generating electricity but which the West suspects has military goals.