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A high-ranking nuclear scientist was killed in an attack in Iran. It is said that he played a key role in the nuclear program. According to the Iranian leadership, the responsibility for the death of the physicist rests with Israel.
A high-ranking Iranian nuclear physicist was killed in Iran. “We hereby announce the martyrdom of Dr. Mohsen Fachrisadeh,” Tehran’s Defense Ministry said on state television. At the same time, several Iranian authorities blamed Israel for the murder.
According to the Defense Ministry, Fachrisadeh was “shot by terrorists” in his car and seriously injured. He later succumbed to his injuries in hospital. Local authorities confirmed the death of the physicist and some of the attackers. Fachrisadeh, 63, was an expert in missile manufacturing and a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. More recently, Fachrisadeh headed the Department of Research and Technological Renewal of the Ministry of Defense.
Iranian leadership accuses Israel
Hossein Deghan, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, directly accused Israel and threatened those responsible with retaliation. “In the last days of your ally’s political life in the game, the Zionists are trying to intensify and increase the pressure on Iran to wage an all-out war,” he wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to US President Donald Trump. “We will descend like lightning on the murderers of this repressed martyr and make them regret their actions.”
For the Iranian Foreign Minister and head of the Atomic Energy Agency, Javad Zarif, there are also signs of Israel. He wrote on Twitter that the cowardly act, with serious indications of Israeli involvement, showed a bitter warmongering intent on the part of the perpetrators. He called on the international community, especially the EU, to condemn this “act of terrorism”.
The physicist is said to have been the head of the nuclear program.
“Assassinating nuclear scientists is the most violent course preventing us from reaching modern science,” wrote Hossein Salami, commander of the influential Iranian Revolutionary Guard, on Twitter. As the Fars news agency reported, the Israeli secret services had been trying for years to eliminate him. The background is supposed to be Fachrisadeh’s role in the Iranian nuclear program Amad (Hope), which he is said to have led in the early 2000s.
Israel and the West had claimed that the program was a military project investigating whether a nuclear weapon could be built in Iran. Tehran has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Israel initially declined to comment on the murder of Fachrisadeh. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once mentioned the physicist at a press conference and said: “Write down this name.”
