The assassination of Iran’s most prominent nuclear scientist in the capital Tehran

Iranian media reported that the prominent Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh was assassinated earlier Friday in Tehran.

Fakhrizadeh is a leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the head of the “New Defense Research Organization”, and is on the UN Security Council sanctions list.

Four Iranian nuclear scientists – Masoud Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Dariush Rezaie Nejad and Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan – were assassinated in Tehran during the two years 2010-2012, using magnetic bombs to assassinate three of them, and one of them was shot in front of his house. 

In June 2012, the Iranian government announced that it had arrested all terrorists behind the assassinations.

Tehran accused both Israel and the United States of being behind these operations. 

Israel has refused to comment on the accusations so far. 

However, this month, Israeli Mossad agents carried out the assassination of the second man in the al Qaeda organization, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, nicknamed Abu Muhammad al Masry, according to the “New York Times” newspaper, which Tehran denied taking place, considering that this news had political goals.

For his part, an Iranian military commander said on Friday that his country would respond by targeting the killers of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

“We will strike like lightning the killers of this martyr, and we will make them regret their act,” Hussein Dehghani said in a tweet.

Dehghani is a military advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In turn, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the existence of “serious indications of an Israeli role” in the assassination of the prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran on Friday.

“Terrorists killed a prominent scientist today,” the minister wrote on his Twitter account. 

This cowardly act – with serious indications of an Israeli role – shows the desperate aggressive intentions of the perpetrators, adding that, “Iran calls on the international community, especially the European Union, to desist from its flawed double standards and condemn this act of state terrorism”.