{"id":8275,"date":"2020-11-27T21:35:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T21:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/?p=8275"},"modified":"2020-11-27T21:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T21:35:19","slug":"leading-irani-nuke-scientist-murdered-with-clear-indicators-of-israeli-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/leading-irani-nuke-scientist-murdered-with-clear-indicators-of-israeli-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading Irani Nuke Scientist Murdered – with – Clear Indicators of Israeli Role"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Tehran; Al-Jazeerah – High-ranking Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, named by the West as leading the Islamic Republic\u2019s military nuclear programme until its disbanding in the early 2000s, has been assassinated in an ambush near Tehran.<\/h3>\n

Fakhrizadeh was shot \u201cby terrorists\u201d in his vehicle in Absard, a suburb in eastern Tehran, and he later succumbed to his injuries in what amounted to a \u201cmartyr\u2019s death\u201d, Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry said on Friday.<\/h3>\n

Local authorities had confirmed Fakhrizadeh\u2019s death several hours earlier and also said that several attackers were killed.<\/h3>\n

Fakhrizadeh served as the head of the Research and Innovation Organisation of the defence ministry at the time of his death.<\/h3>\n

Iran\u2019s foreign minister alleged the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh bore \u201cserious indications\u201d of an Israeli role, but did not elaborate.<\/h3>\n

Israel declined to immediately comment on the killing of Fakhrizadeh, whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called out in a news conference saying: \u201cRemember that name.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Israel has long been suspected of carrying out a series of targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists nearly 10 years ago.<\/h3>\n

Photos and video shared online showed a Nissan sedan with bullet holes through windshield and blood pooled on the road.<\/h3>\n

The semiofficial Fars News Agency said witnesses heard the sound of an explosion and then machine gun fire. The attack targeted the car Fakhrizadeh was travelling in, the agency said.<\/h3>\n

Those wounded, including Fakhrizadeh\u2019s bodyguards, were taken to a local hospital, the agency said.<\/h3>\n

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.<\/h3>\n

Al Jazeera\u2019s Assed Baig, reporting from Tehran, said that according to Fars News Agency, Fakhrizadeh \u201ccame under attack by three-four unknown assailants\u201d.<\/h3>\n

\u201cThey also say three-four people were killed in that incident,\u201d Baig said.<\/h3>\n

\u201cWe have had the head of the Revolutionary Guard say that assassinating nuclear scientists is an attempt by hegemonic powers to stop Iran from gaining new sciences.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Iran\u2019s foreign minister called on the international community to condemn \u201cthis act of state terror\u201d.<\/h3>\n

\u201cTerrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice \u2013 with serious indications of Israeli role \u2013 shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators,\u201d Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter on Friday.<\/h3>\n

Fakhrizadeh, 63, had been a member of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard and was an expert in missile production. Fars said that is why Israeli secret services had long sought to eliminate him for many years.<\/h3>\n

A military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Israel of killing Fakhrizadeh to try to provoke a war.<\/h3>\n

\u201cIn the last days of the political life of their \u2026 ally [US President Donald Trump], the Zionists (Israel) seek to intensify pressure on Iran and create a full-blown war,\u201d commander Hossein Dehghan tweeted.<\/h3>\n

He said Fakhrizadeh\u2019s work will continue to be a \u201cnightmare\u201d for Iran\u2019s enemies.<\/h3>\n

Fakhrizadeh was one of \u201cthe people who are fighting without any claims behind the scenes of political battles and achieved martyrdom in this path\u201d, Dehghan tweeted.<\/h3>\n

The US Pentagon declined to comment on reports of the attack.<\/h3>\n

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera that the assassination \u201cis going to make Iranians more assertive when it comes to dealing with its antagonists\u201d and that it was too late for hostile entities to do anything about Iran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/h3>\n

\u201cFifty years ago, if they carried out this attack it would\u2019ve had an impact. But now Iran\u2019s nuclear programme is developed, it\u2019s highly diverse. It has many young scientists and these murders will be more detrimental to Iran\u2019s antagonists, I believe, than Iran,\u201d Marandi said.<\/h3>\n

\u201c[Fakharizadeh] was one of the first generation of people in Iran who helped develop nuclear technology.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Fakhrizadeh led Iran\u2019s so-called Amad (Hope) programme. Israel and the West have alleged it was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon in Iran. Tehran has long maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful.<\/h3>\n

The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Amad programme ended in the early 2000s. Its inspectors now monitor Iranian nuclear sites.<\/h3>\n

The assassination comes as Trump, who has been fervently backed by Israel in his \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign on Iran, is slated to leave office in less than two months after losing the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.<\/h3>\n

In recent weeks, multiple reports by American media have said, citing unnamed sources, that Trump has been seriously considering a military attack on Iran, even on its main nuclear site in Natanz.<\/h3>\n

In May 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from Iran\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and imposed harsh economic sanctions that have only escalated since.<\/h3>\n

In the first European reaction to Fakhrizadeh\u2019s assassination, Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the attack may be related to Biden\u2019s promise to return to the nuclear deal.<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not unlikely that this targeted killing was part of efforts to prevent the Biden administration from reviving diplomacy with Iran and going back to the nuclear agreement,\u201d he tweeted.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tehran; Al-Jazeerah – High-ranking Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, named by the West as leading the Islamic Republic\u2019s military nuclear programme until its disbanding in the early 2000s, has been assassinated in an ambush near Tehran. Fakhrizadeh was shot \u201cby terrorists\u201d in his vehicle in Absard, a suburb in eastern Tehran, and he later succumbed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,46],"tags":[688,285,687,273],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8277,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275\/revisions\/8277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}