  In this paper we study the iron content of a sample of 22 nearby hot clusters
observed with BeppoSAX. We find that the global iron mass of clusters is
tightly related to the cluster luminosity and that the relatively loose
correlation between the iron mass and the cluster temperature follows from the
combination of the iron mass vs. luminosity and luminosity vs. temperature
correlations. The iron mass is found to scale linearly with the intracluster
gas mass, implying that the global iron abundance in clusters is roughly
constant. This result suggests that enrichment mechanisms operate at a similar
rate in all clusters. By employing population synthesis and chemical enrichment
models, we show that the iron mass associated to the abundance excess which is
always found in the centre of cool core clusters can be entirely produced by
the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG), which is always found at the centre of cool
core clusters. The iron mass associated to the excess, the optical magnitude of
the BCG and the temperature of the cluster are found to correlate with one
another suggesting a link between the properties of the BCG and the hosting
cluster. These observational facts lends strength to current formation theories
which envisage a strong connection between the formation of the giant BCG and
its hosting cluster.
