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“This is a criminal act that goes against the EU’s principle of respect for human rights,” the European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a statement.
The report does not mention any names, but claims that an Iranian government official and several civilians were killed in a series of violent attacks in Absard on Friday.
Iran’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was “seriously injured” in an attack near the city of Absard, in Tehran’s eastern Damavand province, in which assailants fired at his car and shot himself. They were involved in a shootout with their bodyguards.
The report says Fahrizadeh, who led the ministry’s research and innovation organization, later became a “martyr” after doctors failed to revive him.
“In these turbulent times, it is more important than ever that all countries remain calm and exercise the utmost restraint to avoid an escalation that could go against the interests of anyone,” the EEAS report said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday that there were “serious signs of Israel’s role” in Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.
At the time, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday accused Israel of acting as a “mercenary” of the United States and accused the Jewish state of orchestrating the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.
The president has promised that Iran “will not leave this crime unanswered” and that it will retaliate “in due course.”
The New York Times reported that a US official and two other intelligence officials had confirmed that the attack was organized by Israel, but did not provide further details.
According to publicly available data, Fakhrizadeh previously served in the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps, held an important position in the logistics center of the Defense Ministry, and also ran a physics research center. Western countries consider this specialist the architect of the military component of Iran’s nuclear program.
So far, at least six scientists involved in nuclear research have died in Iran.
Fakhrizadeh was assassinated less than two months before Joe Biden took office as president of the United States.
Biden vows to return to diplomacy with Iran and abandon President Donald Trump’s four-year military policy against 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, officially called 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.
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