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The body of Iran’s top nuclear scientist has been prepared for burial as anger against Israel and the United States erupted in the country after his assassination last week.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s coffin, draped in the Iranian flag and topped with flowers, was transported to a Muslim shrine for prayers and final tributes, state news from the country reported.
His remains will be taken from the Imam Reza shrine to the Fatima Masumeh shrine in Qom, south of Tehran, and then to the Imam Khomeini shrine in the capital, according to the Defense Ministry.
Fakhrizadeh was killed on Friday on a highway near the capital in a military-style firearm and bomb assault that has led to escalating tensions in the Middle East. A bodyguard was also killed in the attack.
High-ranking military commanders and their family will attend Fakhrizadeh’s funeral, Iran’s Defense Ministry said on its website.
Israel has not claimed responsibility or officially commented on the attack. However, Tehran has long blamed its arch nemesis Israel for killing several of its nuclear scientists, and Fakhrizadeh is considered the highest ranking, having founded the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in the early 2000s.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has promised “ultimate punishment for the perpetrators and those who ordered it,” putting Israel on alert for a possible military response in the coming days.
An opinion piece published Sunday by a hardline Iranian newspaper suggested that Iran should attack Haifa, a port city in northern Israel.
The Kayhan newspaper carried an opinion piece by an Iranian analyst, Sadollah Zarei, who suggested an attack that destroys the facilities and “also causes a large number of human casualties.”
Such an attack would be an effective deterrent, he said, “because the United States, the Israeli regime and its agents are in no way prepared to participate in a war and a military confrontation.”
Iran has attacked Israeli targets abroad. Its representative in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has also carried out attacks during previous rounds of increased hostility.
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament, said Sunday that Iran’s enemies must be made to repent of the assassination. “The criminal enemy has no regrets except with a strong reaction,” he said in a broadcast on Iranian state radio.
While Iran claims that its nuclear program is not military and focuses on energy, Fakhrizadeh was subject to US sanctions; Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused him of leading a secret atomic weapons operation.
The timing of the attack has led to suggestions that Israel, possibly with the support of Donald Trump, is attempting to stop any future attempts by incoming President Joe Biden to reconcile with Iran.
To Israel’s dismay, Biden has said that he is willing to join the Iran nuclear deal abandoned by Trump and lift some economic sanctions if Iran again complies with the deal.
Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser when Biden was vice president of Barack Obama, did not suggest who was to blame for this murder, but criticized it as an “outrageous move intended to undermine diplomacy between an incoming US administration and Iran.”
All future UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites should end as a result of Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, the Iranian parliament unanimously agreed on Sunday.
The response suggests that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, already violated by Iran by breaking agreed limits on enriched uranium reserves, will come under severe pressure in the coming weeks as Iran responds to the attack. Parliament said in a reference to Israel that what it described as “the hand of the murderous Zionist regime” could be clearly seen in the assassination.
Tehran said that those who thought that negotiating with the United States was the right way had been wrong. Parliament said Iran should withdraw from the so-called additional protocol, the measure that gives the IAEA’s UN weapons inspectors access to Iran’s nuclear sites.
Such a move would likely be regarded as the effective end of the nuclear deal by its three European signatories: Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Iranian hardliners have long argued that Israeli spies operate within IAEA inspection.
Parliament met in closed session on Saturday to hear an intelligence report on how the murder occurred and to update the progress of the investigation.
Sunday’s statement alone does not create any legal duty for either the Iranian government or the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, but members of parliament are finalizing a bill on the strategic act to repeal the sanctions to create that obligation. .
Numerous Iranian military and political officials have said Iran will not respond militarily to the assassination at this stage, as it would play the game of those in Israel and the United States who wish to foment a war in the Middle East before Trump withdraws in January. But Iran is debating whether the assassination has shown that diplomatic negotiations with the Biden administration will be futile.
Former Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted: “The murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was reckless, provocative and illegal. As a new administration comes to power, it clearly intended to undermine diplomacy between the United States and Iran. We must not allow that to happen. Diplomacy, not murder, is the best way forward. “
Biden has yet to comment, but his allies say he remains committed to reinstating the United States in the nuclear deal.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab during an interview on Sky said the UK had no proof of responsibility for the attack and said: “We are still waiting to see the full facts of what happened in Iran, but I I would say that we stand by the rules of international military law, which is very clear against civilians. “
On Saturday, the Iranian Ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, urged the UK government to unreservedly condemn Fakhrizadeh’s murder, saying he was a dedicated scientist and said the attack was “a clear violation of international law, as well as human rights values and norms.”
Raab said he was willing to meet with Iranian leaders to discuss a way forward. He said: “There is an opportunity to look at the JCPOA [the Iran deal] again with the Biden administration, but there are a number of options for them to go further and further down the road with their breach of their obligations under the nuclear deal, and we will be, until Christmas, I will meet with my colleagues, also with Iran, if they are willing to go into the store, to make sure we hold them accountable, but also to try to find a peaceful path. “
Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, defended the negotiation of the nuclear deal predicting that some of the unnecessary tensions in US-Iran relations could be eliminated under Biden. Trump, he said, had contracted US Middle East policy with Netanyahu, creating the worst era in US-Iran relations in 40 years.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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