Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has blamed Israel for the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. “Once again, the evil hands of global arrogance were stained with the blood of the mercenary usurper Zionist regime,” Rouhani said in a statement, according to Reuters, citing state TV.He added: “The assassination of martyr (Mohsen) Fakhrizadeh shows our enemies’ despair and the depth of their hatred… His martyrdom will not slow down our achievements.”The head of Iran’s nuclear program, Fakhrizadeh, 59, was assassinated in Damavand, east of Tehran, Iran confirmed on Friday afternoon. “The nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated today by terrorists,” the Iranian Defense Ministry wrote in a statement, not blaming any specific entity for the incident. However, both Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Iran’s UN envoy later stated Friday that a “serious indication” pointed to Israeli involvement, with Zarif also urging the international community to condemn the attack.
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Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetratorsIran calls on int’l community—and especially EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 27, 2020
Pictures from the scene show two vehicles, one blown up and one shot at from the front, which had been carrying Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards. Several local reports in Iran indicated that a suicide bomber was involved in the attack, but that has not yet been confirmed. A military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei accused Israel of trying to provoke “a full-blown” war by killing Fakhrizadeh.
“In the last days of the political life of their … ally (US President Donald Trump), the Zionists (Israel) seek to intensify pressure on Iran and create a full-blown war,” commander Hossein Dehghan tweeted.”We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” Dehghan added.
Later on Friday, Iran wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. Security Council that there are “serious indications of Israeli responsibility” in the assassination and that it reserves the right to defend itself.
“Warning against any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel against my country, particularly during the remaining period of the current administration of the United States in office, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its rights to take all necessary measures to defend its people and secure its interests,” Iran’s UN envoy, Majid Takht Ravanchi, wrote in the letter, which was seen by Reuters.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint on Friday evening, before the Iranian letter had been sent.
“We have noted the reports that an Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated near Tehran today. We urge restraint and the need to avoid any actions that could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region,” Guterres’ spokesman Farhan Haq said.
Also on Friday, Hezbollah‘s deputy spokesperson, Sheikh Naim Qassem, addressed Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and said that the response for the incident is in Iran’s hand, and that Iran has every right to seek revenge for Fakhrizadeh’s death.
“We condemn this heinous attack and see that the response to this crime is in the hands of those concerned in Iran,” Sheikh Naim Qassem said in an interview with Al Manar television.
He said Fakhrizadeh was killed by “those sponsored by America and Israel” and said the assassination was part of a war on Iran and the region.
The death Fakhrizadeh is likely to complicate any effort by US President-elect Joe Biden to revive the detente of Barack Obama’s presidency, and may lead to confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office and the Pentagon have yet to comment on the reports. Fakhrizadeh was a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer and headed Iran’s nuclear weapons project. He was a professor of physics at the Imam Hussein University in Tehran and was former head of Iran’s Physics Research Center (PHRC).
The semi-official Fars News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, stated that Fakhrizadeh was injured in the attempted assassination and later died in the hospital.
“News sources say a scientist has been the victim of an assassination attempt in an armed attack by unknown people on his team of bodyguards,” Iranian state television said in rolling coverage of the incident.
— Reza Khaasteh (@Reza_Khaasteh) November 27, 2020
“Unfortunately, the medical team did not succeed in reviving him, and a few minutes ago, this manager and scientist achieved the high status of martyrdom after years of effort and struggle,” a statement by Iran’s armed forces carried by state media said.
Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Mohammad Bagheri said that terrorist groups and the perpetrators of this blind act need to know that “severe revenge” awaits them.
— علیرضا صلواتی Alireza Salavati (@SalavatiAlireza) November 27, 2020
The Iran Atomic Energy organization has yet to confirm the reports, saying that no incident involving nuclear scientists took place to the best of its knowledge, ISNA News Agency reported.
Fakhrizadeh has long been suspected by Western, Israeli and Iranian exile foes of the Islamic Republic to have masterminded what the UN nuclear watchdog and US intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons program in Iran shelved in 2003.
He had the rare distinction of being the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear program and whether it was aimed at developing a nuclear bomb.
BREAKING: Iranian media reporting that high level nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated. Widely referred to as Iran’s Robert Oppenheimer. He is by far the most important Iranian nuclear scientist to be assassinated to date. Netanyahu had mentioned him by name— Ali Arouzi (@aliarouzi) November 27, 2020
In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “remember that name,” referring to Fakhrizadeh, after he announced that the Mossad had obtained 100,000 files from Iran’s secret nuclear archives.The files retrieved by Mossad focused on the secret Iranian nuclear program that was developed from 1999 to 2003 called Project Amad, which was led by Fakhrizadeh. When Iran entered the 2015 nuclear deal, it denied that such a program existed.
In 2003, Iran was forced to shelve Project Amad, but not its nuclear ambitions. It split its program into an overt program and a covert one that continued the nuclear work under the title of scientific knowhow development, Netanyahu said at the time.
It continued this work in a series of organizations, which in 2018 were led by SPND, an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry led by the same person who led Project Amad – Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Netanyahu said.
Tovah Lazaroff and Idan Zonshine contributed to this report.
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