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Scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was “seriously injured” after the attackers fired at his car and engaged in a shootout with his bodyguards, the Defense Ministry said.
The report says Fakhrizadeh, who led the ministry’s research and innovation organization, later became a “martyr” when doctors failed to revive him.
In 2008, the United States imposed sanctions on Fakhrizadeh for “participation in activities and transactions that contributed to the development of Iran’s nuclear program.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the specialist the “father” of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.
The 59-year-old scientist died while driving near the city of Absard, in the eastern Damanand district of Tehran province.
A journalist on state television said a van was detonated next to Fakhrizadeh’s car, in which a bomb was hidden under a load of firewood. Then a car with greater pace approached the car, and the attackers in it began to burn from the vending machines.
Photos and videos from the scene show a black Nissan sedan standing on the side of the road with bullets slicing through its windshield. A clan of blood could be seen on the asphalt of the road.
State television noted that Mr. Fakhrizadeh was “one of our country’s nuclear physicists” and added that Israel “felt an old and deep hostility towards him.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said there were “serious signs of Israel’s role” in the incident.
“Terrorists have killed a prominent Iranian scientist today.” This cowardice, and serious signs of Israel’s role, shows the desperate efforts of criminals to incite war, “Zarif wrote on Twitter.
He also called on the international community to “put an end to the shameful double standards [taikymą] and condemn this act of state terrorism. “
“Painful blow”
A Netanyahu spokesman, when asked about the incident by a reporter for the AFP news agency in Jerusalem, declined to comment.
The commander of the Iranian armed forces called the murder of M. Fakhrizdeh a “bitter and painful blow to the defense system of our country” and warned that “an angry revenge” awaited those responsible.
“It just came to our knowledge then [iraniečius]”We will not rest until we catch and punish those responsible,” wrote Major General Mohammad Bagheri on Twitter, citing the state news agency IRNA.
Fakhrizadeh was assassinated less than two months before Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States.
Biden vows to return to diplomacy with Iran and abandon President Donald Trump’s four-year military policy toward the country. In 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and returned tough sanctions on Tehran.
Trump said at the time that the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), did not provide sufficient guarantees that Tehran would not be able to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran has always denied that it wants to replenish its arsenal with such weapons.
Trump shared reports of Fakhrizadeh’s murder on Twitter on Friday, but did not comment on it.
“Let’s cross the killers like lightning”
Hossein Dehghan, a high-ranking military adviser to the leader of Iran, a former high-ranking officer in the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps, has accused Israel of the murder in an attempt to provoke war.
“In the final days of their ally’s political life in the game, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran, leading to a massive war,” Dehghan wrote on Twitter, apparently with Trump in mind. “We will cross like lightning to the murderers of this martyred martyr and we will make them repent of their actions.”
Ellie Geranmayeh, an expert for the European Council on International Relations, wrote in a Twitter post that “the purpose of this assassination was not to disrupt [Irano] nuclear program and undermine diplomacy. “
He noted that recent visits by high-ranking US officials to Israel and Saudi Arabia “were a warning that something was being prepared” to “provoke Iran and complicate Biden’s diplomatic efforts.”
The killing took place the day after Thailand announced the return to Iran of three citizens imprisoned for a failed attempt to carry out a 2012 bomb attack in Bangkok. Israel linked that conspiracy to a series of attacks on its diplomats around the world.
Iran said the three individuals were “businessmen and two other citizens” detained on “false charges” but did not elaborate on its statement.
Fakhrizadeh has become the latest victim in a series of killings of nuclear scientists in recent years. The Shiite Republic blames Israel for these attacks.
In early November, The New York Times reported that two Israeli agents on motorcycles had secretly shot the second leader of the Al Qaeda terror network in Tehran on instructions from Washington.
The leader, known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was assassinated in August along with his daughter Miriam, the widow of Hamza, son of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, intelligence services said, citing intelligence sources.
However, Iran said the report was based on “fictitious information” and once again denied that any member of this extremist Sunni group was operating in the Shiite republic.
Iranian news agencies IRNA and Mehr reported a similar incident at the time, identifying the victims as Lebanese history professor Habib Dawoud, 58, and his daughter Maryam, 27. The agencies did not release further information.
It is not allowed to publish, quote or reproduce the information of the BNS news agency in the media and on websites without the written consent of the UAB “BNS”.
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