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Well-known nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh died after an attack on his car. Tehran accuses Israel and threatens revenge.
On Friday, nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh died of injuries sustained in a Tehran hospital after a car attack.
Photo: AFP
According to unanimous reports from Iranian state media, the leading figure in the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program was killed in an attack on Friday. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s car was attacked by “terrorists” near the village of Absard, east of Tehran, with an explosive device and then hit with automatic weapons, reported the semi-official Fars news agency, which closed links with the Revolutionary Guard.
Tehran’s Ministry of Defense confirmed Fakhrizadeh’s death on Friday afternoon; Fakhrizadeh had headed an institute attached to the ministry. The “Organization for Defense Research and Innovation” is seen by Western intelligence services as a front organization in which parts of the military nuclear program are said to have continued.
Use the last days under Trump
Tensions in the Gulf region are likely to intensify massively shortly before the end of US President Donald Trump’s term. Hossein Deghan, former defense minister and military adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, announced that Iran will take revenge on those responsible for Fakhrizadeh’s death. He assumed that Israel was trying to start a war with Iran in the “last days of its gaming ally’s political life”.
Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif spoke in a Twitter message of an “act of state terrorism” and “grave indications of an Israeli role” without elaborating or proving this.
Fakhrizadeh, who is described by the agency as a “nuclear scientist”, and his comrades were immediately taken to the hospital, but could not have been saved. According to eyewitnesses, several attackers shot the car. Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards would have killed three or four.
The most wanted man in Iran.
The nuclear physicist was considered by the secret services “the most wanted man in Iran” and as the “father of the Iranian bomb”. The 59-year-old general is said to have joined the Revolutionary Guard as a young man and was instrumental in ensuring that, according to Western intelligence services, Iran developed a complete and functional warhead design and at least tested its components. For a long time he had taught physics at Tehran’s Imam Hussein University, a school of military cadres. However, there hadn’t been a public photo of him in a long time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then presented a photo of himself for the first time in the spring of 2018: in early 2017, Mossad intelligence agents stole tens of thousands of pages of documents on the secret military nuclear program in a spectacular break-in. in a warehouse on the outskirts of the Iranian capital. A middle-aged man, brown hair, parted hips, glasses – that’s what the mastermind behind Iran’s secret nuclear program looked like.
Official image of the atomic physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who died at the age of 59.
Photo: Reuters
In the photos that the Iranian state media have now published, he is clearly aged, he wears glasses, his hair is gray, as is his beard. Netanyahu said at the time that Fakhrizadeh continued to work until the end under the control of the military and with the knowledge of the highest government agencies – but not on what exactly. “Take note of this name!” He added.
Israel initially refused to comment on the murder. However, Israeli intelligence is known to have planned to kill Fakhrizadeh several times over the past fifteen years, according to intelligence expert and journalist Ronen Bergman. However, for various reasons they were not carried out.
Detention mines have already killed other nuclear researchers
Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in attacks in recent years, for example with detention mines. Iran has always blamed Israel and the United States for this. In January, the United States killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport with a drone strike.
In 2008 the then Chief Inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Olli Heinonen, mentioned to member states the central importance of Fakhrizadeh and the Amad plan – the secret bomb project in Iran. At the time, he summed up all suspicions about Iran’s military nuclear program in a dossier, the publication of which was blocked by then IAEA Director General Mohammed al-Baradei. The Vienna Atomic Energy Agency had repeatedly asked Tehran to question Fakhrizadeh.
Will continue to work after retirement
It was also known that Fakhrizadeh did not retire after the Iranian political leadership ordered the project to be suspended in 2003 under the influence of the US invasion of Iraq. Western intelligence assumed that he continued to work with a small team of a dozen people in order to preserve the findings and deepen them through specific research.
The team was then located at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University as a camouflage and has been housed in a nearby building since 2011. Research activities there, according to a November 2011 IAEA report, may be “very relevant to development. of a newspaper “.
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