Iran generally uses the term “global arrogance” to refer to the United States.
Tehran, Iran:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday accused arch-enemy Israel of acting as a “mercenary” of the United States, blaming the Jewish state for assassinating one of Tehran’s prominent nuclear scientists the day before.
“Once again, the evil hands of global arrogance, with the usurping Zionist regime as a mercenary, were stained with the blood of a son of this nation,” Rouhani said in a statement on his official website, referring to the murder of Mohsen. . Fakhrizadeh.
Iran generally uses the term “global arrogance” to refer to the United States.
Fakhrizadeh was “seriously injured” when the assailants attacked his car before participating in a shootout with his bodyguards in an attack on the outskirts of Tehran on Friday, Iran’s Defense Ministry said.
He added that Fakhrizadeh, who headed the ministry’s research and innovation organization, was later “martyred” after doctors failed to revive him.
Rouhani promised that his death “does not disturb” Iran’s scientific progress and said the assassination was due to the “weakness and inability” of Tehran’s enemies to impede its growth.
He offered his condolences to “the scientific community and the revolutionary people of Iran.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday there were “serious indications of an Israeli role” in the assassination.
The United States imposed sanctions on Fakhrizadeh in 2008 for “activities and transactions that contributed to the development of Iran’s nuclear program,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once described him as the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Fakhrizadeh was attacked while traveling near the town of Absard in Damavand county in eastern Tehran province.
The New York Times said a US official and two other intelligence officials confirmed that Israel was behind the attack, without elaborating.
The assassination comes less than two months before the president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, takes office.
Biden has promised a return to diplomacy with Iran after four years of hardliners under Donald Trump, who pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and began imposing crippling sanctions.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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