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DUBAI (REUTERS) – An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of planning a secret nuclear bomb program was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday (November 27), likely to spark a confrontation between Iran and its enemies in the last weeks of Donald Trump’s campaign. presidency.
The military adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed to target the killers of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who died from injuries in hospital after armed assassins shot at his car, state media reported.
“We will strike like thunder at the murderers of this oppressed martyr and make them regret their action,” Hossein Dehghan, also a military commander, tweeted.
Dr. Fakhrizadeh has long been described by Western countries as the leader of a covert atomic bomb program stopped in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of secretly trying to restore. Iran has long denied trying to use nuclear energy as a weapon.
“Unfortunately, the medical team failed to revive (Dr. Fakhrizadeh), and a few minutes ago, this manager and scientist achieved the high status of martyrdom after years of effort and struggle,” Iran’s armed forces said in a statement issued. For the state. media.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said “the terrorists blew up another car” before shooting a vehicle carrying Dr. Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards in an ambush outside the capital.
Whoever is responsible for the attack, it is certain that the tension between Iran and the United States will rise in the final weeks of Trump’s US presidency.
Trump, who lost his bid for re-election on November 3 and left office on January 20, has repeatedly accused Iran of secretly seeking nuclear weapons.
Trump pulled the United States out of a deal under which sanctions against Iran were lifted in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. President-elect Joe Biden has said he would restore it.
An American official confirmed earlier this month that Trump had asked his military aides for a plan for a possible attack on Iran, but had decided not to do so at the time.
Dr. Fakhrizadeh is believed to have spearheaded what the UN nuclear watchdog and US intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons program in Iran, shelved in 2003.
He was the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear program.
AMAD plan
The IAEA report said it monitored activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear program” within the so-called AMAD Plan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu said in a 2018 presentation accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons that Dr. Fakhrizadeh was still working within Iran’s Defense Ministry on “special projects.”
“Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Netanyahu said at the time.
On Friday, before news of the attack on Fakhrizadeh emerged, an Israeli official said Israel was discussing with Arab Gulf states how to approach Iran.
“The story is not Trump, not even Israel. The story is Iran: the growing fear that a new US administration will return to the nuclear agreement that threatens the very existence of the Gulf countries, “Tzachi Hanegbi, part of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told radio station 102 Tel Aviv FM.
“We will know how to handle the problem of the Iranian threat, even if it is by our own means.”
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