This photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020. Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist that Israel alleged led the Islamic Republic's military nuclear program until its disbanding in the early 2000s was “assassinated” Friday, state television said. (Fars News Agency via AP)
Friday Nov. 27, 2020: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian high-ranking nuclear physicist , long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb programme was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday Nov. 27, 2020.
The military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to strike against the killers of Fakhrizadeh, who died of injuries in hospital after armed assassins fired on his car, state media reported.
“We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan, also a military commander.
Fakhrizadeh has long been described by Western countries as a leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of trying to restore in secret, but always denied by Iran.
Fakhrizadeh is thought to have headed what the UN nuclear watchdog and US intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons programme in Iran, shelved in 2003. He was the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear programme.
“Unfortunately, the medical team did not succeed in reviving Fakhrizadeh, and a few minutes ago, this manager and scientist achieved the high status of martyrdom after years of effort and struggle,” Iran’s armed forces said in a statement carried by state media.
Semi-official news agency Tasnim said “terrorists blew up another car” before firing on a vehicle carrying Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards in an ambush outside the capital.
Whoever is responsible for the attack, it is certain to escalate tension between Iran and the United States in the final weeks of Trump’s US presidency.
Trump, lost his re-election bid on Nov. 3 and leaves office on Jan. 20, has repeatedly accused Iran of secretly seeking nuclear weapons. Trump pulled the United States out of a deal under which santions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear programme. President-elect Joe Biden has said he would restore it.
