Iran has accused Israel and the United States of being behind the assassination of one of its top nuclear scientists on Friday and vowed revenge, dramatically increasing tensions in the Persian Gulf in the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was the head of research and innovation at Iran’s Defense Ministry and is seen to have an important role in the country’s nuclear program. He was killed near the Damavand campus of Azad Islamic University, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of central Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news reported.
“The terrorists today assassinated an eminent Iranian scientist. This cowardice, with serious indications of Israel’s role, shows a desperate warmongering of the perpetrators, ”Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet, offering no evidence of Israel’s involvement.
Iran’s military said the United States was also responsible, according to Iran’s Labor News Agency. Defense Minister Amir Hatami told state television that the killing was “clearly related” to the killing of General Qassem Soleimani by the United States by a drone in January.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment, as did Pentagon officials. The Central Intelligence Agency did not immediately respond to questions about whether the United States was aware of plans to carry out an assassination.
Trump again tweeted a New York Times report on the Fakhrizadeh assassination without comment, as well as a tweet from an Israeli journalist calling the assassination “a major psychological and professional blow to Iran.”
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Photos released by the semi-official Fars news agency, allegedly from the scene, showed blood splattered on the street next to a black Iranian-made passenger car with the window down on the driver’s side. The car’s windshield was smashed by several bullet holes.
Fakhrizadeh’s death following the killing of four other Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010, and Tehran often blames intelligence agencies for its arch-enemies, Israel and the United States.
While Israeli officials did not comment, the country has long viewed Iran’s nuclear research efforts as one of its biggest threats to national security. Israel has promised to take all necessary measures to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear warheads, weapons Tehran says it has never tried to develop.
‘Stuxnet’ attack
The United States and Israel are also believed to have worked together on a cyber attack that hit centrifuges linked to Tehran’s nuclear program about a decade ago.
Netanyahu had singled out Fakhrizadeh in an April 2018 presentation he gave about Iran’s nuclear program, claiming that the scientist was the director of a secret project to develop nuclear weapons.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that “Project Amad” was suspended in 2003, and Iran dismissed Netanyahu’s presentations at the time as “lies and warmongers.”
Fakhrizadeh’s assassination comes at a delicate moment in Iran, as Trump’s defeat in the November 3 US election offers an opportunity to reestablish ties with the West after years of economic and military confrontation.
Called to vengeance
His death could spark the kind of popular anger that followed Soleimani’s targeted assassination in an American drone strike in Baghdad ordered by Trump. Iran fired missiles at the bases housing US troops in Iraq in response to that attack, causing no fatalities but raising fears of a slide into war between the two adversaries.
Iranian forces also inadvertently shot down one of their own airliners in response to the Soleimani attack.
Zarif urged the international community to condemn the latest attack, while the head of Iran’s armed forces, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, called for revenge for the killing.
In a letter to the UN Security Council, Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, urged the organization to condemn the attack and warned the United States and Israel to refrain from any “adventurous measures”, especially during the US presidential transition.
Axios reported this week that the Israeli government had instructed the military to prepare for a possible US attack on Iran for the remainder of Trump’s term, though it said the order was not based on intelligence or an assessment that the United States would order a attack.
Fakhrizadeh was also named in a March 2007 UN Security Council resolution for having been involved in Iran’s “nuclear or ballistic missile activities”.
Friday’s murder is nearing the 10th anniversary of the murder of another scientist, Majid Shahriari, who was killed in a car bomb attack on November 29, 2010.
Car bomb
Several Fakhrizadeh security guards were injured in Friday’s attack, in which they fired at their car before an explosive-laden Nissan detonated about 15 to 20 meters away, Hatami told state television.
Read also | Who is the Iranian scientist killed in Tehran?
Hatami said Fakhrizadeh was involved in an air defense project to detect spy planes without using radar systems and that “Israel was well aware of its role in matters that could confuse” Israel. Iran’s sprawling missile program is a key concern for both the United States and Israel, but it is the nuclear issue that has drawn the most scrutiny.
Iran broke limits on how much low-enriched uranium it was allowed to store under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers after Trump abandoned the deal in 2018 and imposed broad economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Tehran’s reserve of low-enriched uranium increased to about 2,443 kilograms (5,386 pounds) from 2,105 kilograms, according to the latest report from UN monitors. That is enough to create three bombs if Iran chooses to enrich the material to weapons grade.
President-elect Joe Biden has said the United States could re-enter the nuclear deal if Iran returns to compliance.
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