A leading Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated in his car with gunfire from remote-controlled automatic weapons in an operation that took less than three minutes, reports from Tehran suggest.
Israeli intelligence services and the UN’s nuclear weapons experts believed that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was instrumental in Iran’s atomic programme. He was
killed as he travelled with his wife towards their house in the suburb of Absard, a weekend destination for the capital’s wealthy residents. Iran has blamed Israel for the attack.
Locals reported hearing a loud blast and sustained gunfire at about 2pm on Friday. Photos show the wreckage of his blacked-out vehicle, which was travelling in a convoy with three other vehicles, strewn across the road.
Dr Fakhrizadeh’s death has embarrassed the Iranian regime 11 months after Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds expeditionary force and architect of Iran’s regional expansion, was
killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. The scientist had been the target of an assassination attempt in 2008, when a hit squad on motorcycles attached explosives to his moving car.
Initial reports suggested that the latest attackers ambushed the convoy in a bomb and gun assault before vanishing. Other accounts suggested that a team of 12 was involved.
The Fars news agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that the shots initially fired at Dr Fakhrizadeh’s car came from a remotely-operated machinegun mounted on a Nissan pick-up truck, which exploded with a self-destruct mechanism.
It claimed that Dr Fakhrizadeh stepped out of the car, thinking it had hit an object or that there was a problem with the engine. No one has claimed to be behind the attack but Tehran has said that it holds Israel responsible.
Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said that there would be “definitive punishment” of the perpetrators.