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After the assassination of a high-ranking Iranian nuclear physicist and Tehran’s blame on Israel, UN Secretary General António Guterres urged restraint. Reports of the incident were noted, UN spokesman Farhan Haq told dpa. “We ask for restraint and consider it necessary to avoid measures that could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region.”
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot and seriously injured in his car on Friday, according to the Iranian government. A short time later he died in a hospital. The Iranian Defense Ministry spoke of a “martyr’s death” when the news was announced.
Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif reported “serious indications” of Israeli involvement. However, it was not clear at first who was behind the attack.
On Twitter, Sarif appealed in particular to the European Union “to abandon its shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror.” The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Mohammad Bagheri, threatened “terrible revenge”.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Majid Tacht, referred in a letter to Guterres that several high-ranking Iranian scientists had been killed “in terrorist attacks” over the past ten years. “Certain foreign circles” were responsible for this. The Fakhrizadeh assassination, in which there are serious indications of Israel’s responsibility, is another attempt to throw the region into chaos and disrupt Iran’s scientific development.
Rawanchi also warned the United States and Israel against “adventurous actions” in the remaining term of the outgoing US President Donald Trump. Iran will take “all necessary measures” in its defense, he stressed.
According to media reports, Fakhrizadeh was shot and killed in the city of Absard, a suburb east of the capital Tehran. Several attackers were also killed, according to local authorities.
Fakhrizadeh was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and an expert in making missiles. According to information from the Iranian news agency Fars, Israeli intelligence services have been trying to eliminate him for years. More recently, Fakhrizadeh headed the Department of Research and Technological Renewal of the Ministry of Defense.
In Western countries and Israel, as well as in exiled opponents of the Iranian leadership, the scientist was suspected of having been the architect of a covert nuclear weapons program that, according to the Tehran government, was suspended in 2003.
Former CIA Chief Condemns Killing As “Criminal Act”
Former CIA chief John Brennan condemned the fatal attack. It was a “criminal act and a most reckless act,” Brennan wrote on Twitter.
“I do not know whether a foreign government ordered or carried out the assassination of Fakhrizadeh,” Brennan wrote, referring to the accusations made by the Iranian government. “Such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law and would encourage other governments to carry out deadly attacks against foreign government officials.”
Fakhrizadeh was not on terrorist lists nor was he a member of the Al-Qaeda terrorist militia or the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia, Brennan said. Anyone on those lists is a legitimate target for deadly attacks.
By killing Fakhrizadeh, those responsible risked “deadly retribution” and “a new round of regional conflict,” Brennan said.
The former CIA chief, considered a staunch critic of outgoing US President Donald Trump, called on the Tehran government to “resist the demand for retaliation.” Ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s scheduled inauguration on January 20, he called on Tehran to await “the return of responsible American leadership on the world stage.”
Brennan was director of the CIA from 2013 to 2017, thus serving under former US President Barack Obama and his then Vice President Biden. This week, however, the future president announced that after taking office, former Brennan deputy Avril Haines would become intelligence director.
The United States government has not yet spoken. Trump only forwarded a comment-free tweet from Israeli journalist Yossi Melman about Fakhrizadeh’s death via his Twitter account. In it, Melman wrote that Fakhrizadeh was the head of the Iranian secret military program and had been wanted by the Israeli secret service Mossad for years. His death is a severe blow to Iran. Melman wrote in another tweet that he was confused about Trump’s retweet.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States unilaterally rescinded an international agreement that was supposed to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb in 2018 and imposed new sanctions on the Tehran government. After a period of one year, during which Tehran unsuccessfully urged the other contracting parties to comply with the treaty, Iran had also gradually ignored almost all the provisions of the agreement. It is unclear whether the United States could return to the nuclear deal under newly elected President Joe Biden.
