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Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadah, was killed in an assassination attempt near the capital, Tehran.
The BBC confirmed the information late Friday, citing the country’s Defense Ministry.
He was pronounced dead at a hospital in the Damaband area of Tehran after an attack on Fakhrizadah.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif condemned the killing, saying it was carried out “with the help of a state.”
International diplomats called him the “father of the Iranian bomb.”
Fakhrizadah is Iran’s most famous nuclear scientist and a senior official in the elite of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
It has long played a key role in Iran’s weapons program.
According to a secret document released by Israel in 2016, Fakhrizadah led Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
In 2015, the New York Times compared him to the director of the Manhattan project, Jay Robert Oppenheimer. It was from this project that the first nuclear weapons were manufactured during World War II.
Terrorists today assassinated an eminent Iranian scientist. This cowardice, with serious indications of the Israeli role, shows a desperate warmongering of the perpetrators.
Iran calls on the international community, and especially the EU, to end its shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror.
– Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 27, 2020
Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly accused Fakhrizadah of playing a role in Iran’s “secret nuclear weapons program”.
Mohsen Fakhrizadah’s death comes amid growing international concern over Iran’s uranium.
Previously, four Iranian nuclear scientists died between 2010 and 2012. Iran has accused Israel of being involved in the killings.
Fakhrizadah was named in a 2016 statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran’s nuclear program.
However, Israel has yet to comment on the news of Mohsen Fakhrizadah’s death.
Mohsen Fakhrizadah took over the Physics Research Center in Iran in 1986. He was later appointed head of research at the Institute of Applied Physics. It is from this institute that Iran’s nuclear research activities are carried out.
He has never been interviewed by the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, his name is found in one of his reports.
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