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TEHRAN: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei retaliated on Saturday (November 28) for the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist, increasing the threat of a new confrontation with the West and Israel in the remaining weeks of the presidency of Donald Trump.
Khamenei vowed to continue the work of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who the Western and Israeli governments believe was the architect of a secret Iranian weapons program.
Friday’s assassination, which Iran’s president quickly blamed on Israel, could complicate any effort by President-elect Joe Biden to revive a détente with Tehran that was forged when he was in the Barack Obama administration.
Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 international nuclear pact agreed between Tehran and the major powers.
Khamenei, who is Iran’s highest authority and who insists the country has never sought nuclear weapons, said on Twitter that Iranian officials must take on the task of “pursuing this crime and punishing its perpetrators and those who commanded it.”
He called Fakhrizadeh a “prestigious nuclear and defense scientist” and said he was “martyred at the hands of criminal and cruel mercenaries.”
“This incomparable scientist gave his dear and valuable life to God because of his great and enduring scientific endeavors, and the great prize of martyrdom is his divine reward,” he added.
An image provided by the official website of the Iranian Supreme Leader on November 27, 2020 shows Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during a meeting with the Iranian Supreme Leader in Tehran on January 23, 2019 (Photo: AFP / Official website of Khamenei / Brochure).
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a televised cabinet meeting on Saturday that Iran would respond “at the right time.”
“Once again, the evil hands of Global Arrogance and the Zionist mercenaries were stained with the blood of an Iranian son,” he said, using terms officials use to refer to Israel.
Israel’s N12 news channel said Israeli embassies had been put on high alert after Iranian threats of retaliation.
Israel has declined to comment on Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the ministry did not comment on security in regards to overseas missions.
The White House, the Pentagon, the US State Department and the CIA have also declined to comment on the assassination, as has Biden’s transition team. Biden will take office on January 20.
“Whether Iran is tempted to retaliate or if it restrains, it will make it difficult for Biden to return to the nuclear deal,” Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence and director of the Israel Institute for National Security Studies, wrote on Twitter.
Fakhrizadeh was “martyred” after being seriously wounded when the assailants attacked his car and engaged in a shootout with his bodyguards outside the capital Tehran on Friday, according to Iran’s Defense Ministry.
The ministry said the scientist, who ran its research and innovation organization, died after doctors failed to revive him.
The scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city east of the capital Tehran, Iran, on November 27, 2020 (Photo: AP / Fars News Agency)
“REMEMBER THAT NAME”
Germany, one of the signatories to the nuclear pact, called for restraint from all parties to avoid derailing future talks.
“Iran will definitely retaliate. When and how depends on our national interests. It could happen in the next few days or weeks, but it will happen,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
He pointed to Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes in January on an Iraqi base where US forces were stationed, days after a US drone strike in Baghdad killed senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani. No US troops were killed in the action.
“Fakhrizadeh’s martyrdom will accelerate our nuclear work,” said Fereydoon Abbasi, former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, who survived an assassination attempt in 2010.
At least four scientists died between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said was an assassination program aimed at sabotaging its nuclear energy program. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons, saying its goals are only peaceful.
Fakhrizadeh was thought to spearhead what the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US intelligence services believe was Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
He was the only Iranian scientist mentioned in the IAEA’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions on Iran’s nuclear program. He said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear program.”
Fakhrizadeh was also a central figure in a presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018, in which he accused Iran of continuing to search for nuclear weapons. “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Netanyahu said at the time.
US intelligence services and the IAEA believe that Iran halted its coordinated weapons program in 2003. The IAEA has said it had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.
The United States deployed the US aircraft carrier Nimitz with accompanying ships to the Gulf on Wednesday, shortly before the killing, but a spokeswoman for the US Navy said the deployment was not related to any specific threat.
