November 27, 2020
beside his car after he was machinegunned by assassins
Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated November 27 when the car he was traveling in was machine-gunned 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Tehran, by killers assumed to have been recruited by Israel.
He was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist murdered, all presumably by Israel. The other three were killed in Tehran by bombs in 2010 and 2012. Another scientist was wounded in a similar attack.
It was widely reported in 2012 that the Obama Administration leaned heavily on Israel to stop the assassinations. There was speculation the latest attack was carried out now because Israel feared pressure from the Biden Administration not to conduct assassinations.
The Fakhrizadeh killing came just after US intelligence officials said Israeli assassins, operating at US request, had killed Al-Qaeda’s number two figure, Egyptian Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, by hiring motorcyclists to gun him down on a street in Tehran August 7.
Fakhrizadeh, reported both as 59 and 62 years old, was killed on a stretch of open highway near the town of Absard in Damavand county. Absard is an area popular with the elite, many of whom have built palatial villas there.
The Tasnim news agency said “terrorists blew up another car” and then machine-gunned the car Fakhrizadeh was in. Reports said a parked pickup truck was blown up as Fakhrizadeh’s car approached in order to force Fakhrizadeh’s car to stop and improve the chances of the assassins to kill him.
The nuclear scientist and another person shot in that car were taken to a nearby hospital, but neither could be saved. According to some reports, the second person killed was Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguard.
The Fars news agency quoted “eyewitnesses” as saying three or four others, “most likely all terrorists,” were also killed in the attack. It didn’t explain who killed those others or how. It also said nothing about any corpses of the assassins. Many suspected there was no return fire at the assassins and that they all got away free, but that the regime wanted it to appear that the security forces were on top of things. A day after the killing, news stories stopped talking about some assassins being killed.
Fakhrizadeh had long been known as the key scientist in Iran’s nuclear program and it was wondered why he had not been targeted before the others who were subject to bombings. Some speculated that Fakhrizadeh, who was also a one-star general in the Pasdaran, was always under very heavy guard, discouraging Israel from going after him.
A number of officials spoke of Israel being the perpetrator, but did not pretend to have any evidence. Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said there were “serious indicators of an Israeli role,” but did not say what they were. Nonetheless, it would be hard to find anyone who did not assume Israel’s involvement. What debate there was centered on whether the Trump Administration was also involved, at least to the extent of giving its approval in advance.
Fakhrizadeh was often called the Robert Oppenheimer of Iran’s nuclear program, referring to the man who was the chief scientist of the American program that produced the first atomic bomb after 45 months of work. Fakhrizadeh had been involved in Iran’s nuclear program—which Iran insisted was only a peaceful program, unlike Oppenheimer’s—since the mid-1980s, about a third of a century.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) long ago identified Fakhrizadeh as a major figure in Iran’s nuclear program and asked to interview him. The Islamic Republic refused, saying he was just a professor at Imam Hossain University and not linked to Iran’s nuclear program. But the regime subsequently acknowledged he was a key figure in the nuclear program.
After his death, however, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, sent a letter to the UN secretary general saying Fakhrizadeh played an “outstanding role” in developing a coronavirus test kit that Iran is now manufacturing. Iran had never before said that, and Takht-Ravanchi did not say how a physicist could do such medical work.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi waited a day before commenting—and recognizing Fakhrizadeh as contributing to Iran’s military.. He said, “Our distinguished nuclear scientist in the defense of our country, Mr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by the oppressive enemies. This rare scientific mind lost his life for his everlasting great scientific work. He lost his life for God and the Supreme Leader. God shall reward him greatly.”
Khamenehi then directed the government to do two things: “Follow up the atrocity and retaliate against those who are responsible for it, and follow up Martyr Fakhrizadeh’s scientific and technical activities in all fields in which he was active.”
Fakhrizadeh’s killing came almost 11 months after the murder in Baghdad of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleymani. Therefore, in one year Iran has the lost the two people most recognized internationally as being extremely skillful and helpful to the regime—a double blow of major proportions.
In June 2012, Iran announced that its intelligence forces had identified and arrested all terrorist elements behind the earlier assassinations of the country’s nuclear scientists. Several people were executed, one after confessing that he had been trained in Israel.
The three earlier killings and one unsuccessful attack all involved bombs next to the cars of the scientists.
The first to be assassinated was Massoud Ali-Mohammadi on January 12, 2010. A bomb was attached to a bicycle that was left adjacent to the scientist’s car parked outside his Tehran home. When Ali-Mohammadi got into his car, someone watching from a nearby building triggered the bomb.
On November 29, 2010, Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani were being driven to work in separate cars. Minutes apart, motorcyclists overtook their cars and a passenger on the rear of each motorcycle leaned over and placed a magnetic bomb on each vehicle, then sped off seconds before the bombs exploded. Shahriari was killed. Davani heard the click of the magnetic bomb being attached to his car and ordered his wife to jump out. He followed her. Both were injured but survived. Davani was later named to head the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
In January 12, 2012, (the second anniversary of the first assassination), Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was also a victim of a magnetic bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist. His driver and a nearby pedestrian also died.
A physicist and university lecturer, Dariush Rezai, 35, was killed by a gunshot to the head July 23, 2011, as he was waiting outside his daughter’s school to pick her up. Many have listed him as another victim of an Israeli attack, but Deputy Interior Minister Safarali Baratlu said Rezai had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program and the killing was believed to be the result of a personal dispute.
No group has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks, including the latest.
Israeli analysts have said over the years that the goal of the assassinations was not just to kill the skillful physicists behind the nuclear program, but also to discourage other talented physicists from joining the program for fear they would not survive to old age.
Former Defense Minister Hossain Dehqan, now an adviser to the Supreme Leader, announced after the Fakhrizadeh assassination, “We will descend like lightning on the killers of this martyr and we will make them regret their actions.”