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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
- Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was fatally wounded when his car was attacked by unknown persons outside Tehran.
- Fakhrizadeh was the head of the Defense Ministry’s research and innovation organization.
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Israel of being behind the attack.
Iran said one of its most prominent nuclear scientists was killed on Friday in an attack on his car outside Tehran that accused his arch-enemy Israel of being behind.
Scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was “seriously injured” when the assailants attacked his car before participating in a shootout with his security team, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
He added that Fakhrizadeh, who headed the Defense Ministry’s research and innovation organization, was later “martyred” after doctors failed to revive him.
Fakhrizadeh, once described by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, was traveling in a car near the town of Absard in Damavand county in eastern Tehran province.
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Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said there were “serious indications of an Israeli role” in the scientist’s murder.
“Terrorists assassinated an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.
“This cowardice, with serious indications of Israel’s role, shows a desperate warmongering of the perpetrators,” he added.
He also asked the international community to “put an end to its shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror.”
Fakhrizadeh’s assassination comes less than two months before Joe Biden takes office as president of the United States.
Biden has promised a return to diplomacy with Iran after four years of hardliners under current US President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and began reimposing devastating sanctions.
Trump said at the time that the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not offer sufficient guarantees to prevent Tehran from acquiring an atomic bomb. Iran has always denied that it wants such a weapon.
