[ad_1]
– Terrorist groups, leaders and perpetrators of this cowardly murder must know that serious revenge awaits them, he writes in a Twitter message reproduced by the state news agency IRNA.
Bagheri describes Fakhrizadeh’s death as “a hard and bitter blow.”
– We ensure that we will not rest until we have hunted and punished those involved, he writes.
Iranian researcher Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who is described as the leader of a military nuclear program, was killed in an assassination attempt outside Tehran, Iranian media report.
The Iranian Defense Ministry confirms reports by the Fars news agency and other Iranian media that Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, about 70 kilometers east of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The details of the attack are unknown, but according to Fars, the car he was in was hit first by a bomb and later by armed men.
According to the news agency, three or four of the attackers were killed in the shooting that followed.
Directed nuclear program
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Fakhrizadeh ran a military nuclear program nearly 20 years ago and was included on the US sanctions list in 2008. It is unclear what position he held now.
In 2018, he was appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference.
– Remember this name, said Netanyahu, who accuses Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Disrupted
After President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on the Fakhrizadeh-led organization, known by the acronym SPND.
According to the US authorities, it was a military organization that considered opportunities to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranian authorities announce that they want to develop such weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed in a 2015 report that Fakhrizadeh had previously led a program examining “a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program,” but that work was halted in the early 2000s, according to the IAEA.
Mossad Prosecutor
It is not known who was behind Friday’s killing, but the Israeli intelligence service Mossad is accused of having killed at least four Iranian nuclear investigators earlier.
– Terrorists killed a prominent Iranian researcher today. This cowardice, that there are strong indications that Israel is behind, shows that the culprits are very belligerent, says a statement from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Western intelligence sources have previously confirmed that Mossad has been behind previous assassinations, and the Iranian security service has uncovered various assassination plots over the years and arrested and convicted Iranians who are said to have participated.
“The deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group funded, trained and armed by Israeli intelligence,” several high-level US intelligence sources confirmed to NBC News in 2012.
Sentenced to death
The Iranian group referred to is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), which has previously been on the US and EU terrorist lists.
Swedish-Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalali was sentenced to death by an Iranian court in 2017 after being found guilty of providing information to Mossad about two Iranian nuclear scientists who died. Djalali has not yet been executed.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard says in an announcement that the attack on Fakhrizadeh will be avenged, Reuters reports.
