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Iranian Foreign Minister: “Terrorists have murdered a prominent Iranian scientist.”
One of Iran’s most prominent scientists was killed in an apparent assassination on Friday, Iranian officials said.
Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami said Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, deputy defense minister and head of research and defensive innovations for the Iranian military, was killed outside Tehran as as “target of a terrorist operation”.
“At first the car carrying him was shot at, and about 15 seconds later a Nissan pickup truck loaded with explosives exploded about 15 to 20 meters from his car,” Hatami said. “He was seriously injured and taken to hospital along with two other people who were with him.”
Although no one claimed responsibility for the murder, the incident drew a full response from senior Iranian officials, including the country’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who pointed the finger at Israel.
“Terrorists murdered a prominent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice – with serious indications of the Israeli role – shows a desperate warmongering by the perpetrators,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.
Iran has accused Israel of complicity in the murder of four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012, although this has never been confirmed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Fakhrizadeh by name during a 2018 presentation on Iran’s nuclear program, in which he alleged that material was stolen by Israel from Iranian nuclear archives.
“A key part of the plan was to form new organizations to continue the work,” Netanyahu said at the time. “This is how Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Amad project, put it. Remember this name – ‘Fakhrizadeh.
Fakhrizaseh was 59 years old. He was added to the US sanctions list against Iran in 2008, and additional sanctions were imposed on his research organization last year. He taught nuclear physics at Imam Hossein University, a military university in Tehran.
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