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A senior Iranian security official accused Israel of using “electronic devices” to carry out a remote assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the country’s supreme national security council, made the remarks at Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s funeral.
“The operation was very complex and was carried out using electronic devices, and no one was present at the scene,” he told the Iranian media. He blamed Israel, which has not commented on the assassination, and said an Iranian opposition group in exile called Mujahedeen-e-Khalq had also played a role. It did not provide evidence to support the claims.
His comments on Friday’s attack differ significantly from the authorities’ initial accounts that Fakhrizadeh was killed in an assault carried out by men armed with machine guns and explosives.
The Fars news agency reported more detailed claims Sunday night, saying the attack involved the use of a remote-controlled weapon mounted on a car. He said there were no attackers present at the time of the murder.
A report said that Fakhrizadeh and his wife were traveling in a bulletproof car along with three bodyguard vehicles when the shots hit their car. Fakhrizadeh got out of the car to check for damage, according to the report, speculating that he may have thought he had hit something.
“At this time, from a Nissan car that was stopped 150 meters from the martyr’s car, several shots were fired at the martyr with a remote-controlled automatic machine gun,” the report says, adding that a bullet struck him in the back.
“Moments later, the same arrested Nissan exploded,” he said, adding that the owner of the car, whom he did not identify, had left the country a month ago. He said the weapons could have been controlled by satellite.
Iranian state broadcaster Press TV aforementioned Unidentified “informed sources” who said the remnants of the attack showed that Israeli weapons had been used to kill Fakhrizadeh.
The Guardian was unable to independently verify any of the reports, which did not provide evidence, although the technology behind the remotely controlled weapons stations was established.
Israel has not claimed responsibility or officially commented on the attack.
A retired Israeli intelligence officer said he could not speculate on the viability of the technology that could carry out a remote, satellite-controlled killing by Israel or any other country.
“I’m not in business anymore,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former brigadier general who headed the country’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He said reports from Iran, which were not supported by photos, suggested that authorities were “wandering in the dark” in the investigation.
“They have to show that they are progressing, that they have some starts that they can follow or that they have the upper hand,” he said.
Over the past decade, Iran has accused Israel of killing at least five of its nuclear scientists. Fakhrizadeh is considered the oldest and high profile. Western and Israeli intelligence services had for years described him as the leader of a covert atomic bomb program stopped in 2003.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Fakhrizadeh as a central figure in the show during a 2018 public presentation, accusing Iran of continuing to search for nuclear weapons.
On Monday, Shamkhani, the Iranian official, said there had been so many intelligence reports of a possible attack on Fakhrizadeh that an accurate prediction of Friday’s attack had been ignored.
He said: “Due to the frequency of the news during these 20 years, unfortunately, the required seriousness was not applied, and this time they succeeded.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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