Places blame
Nuclear scientist’s killing adds to soaring tensions
Iran’s president says Israel is responsible for the death of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, adding Tehran will respond at “the right time.”/
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday blamed Israel for killing Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, saying it was aimed at causing turmoil before President-elect Joe Biden takes office and that Tehran would respond at the “right time.”
Fakhrizadeh was killed in a daytime ambush east of Tehran on Friday, Iranian authorities said. Though once a driving force behind Iran’s disbanded effort to build a nuclear weapon nearly two decades ago, his role in Iran’s current programs was less direct.
But the attack stung Iran for apparent lapses in security and intelligence and threatened wider fallout in the region less than two months before Biden takes office and seeks a possible reset in relations with Iran.
Rouhani, however, suggested that Iran could calibrate its possible responses with an eye toward the end of President Donald J. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, which is supported by Israel.
“Their pressure era is coming to an end and the global conditions are changing,” he said.
A spokesman for the European Union released a statement Saturday calling the attack “a criminal act that “runs counter to the principle of respect for human rights the EU stands for.”
The statement continued, “In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for all parties to remain calm and exercise maximum restraint to avoid escalation which cannot be in anyone’s interest.”
In a statement Saturday, Rouhani, referring to Israel, blamed the “usurper Zionist regime” for the killing and said Fakhrizadeh’s death would not impede Iran’s scientific “achievements.” In a separate speech, Rouhani tied the killing to President Donald Trump’s coming departure from office.
Trump — who withdrew the United States from a nuclear pact that Iran struck with world powers five years ago — has ramped up sanctions and other pressures on Tehran since walking away from the deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear program.
Biden has pledged to work more closely with allies on Iran policies and work to rejoin the nuclear agreement.
“This brutal assassination shows that our enemies are passing through anxious weeks, weeks that they feel their pressure era is coming to an end and the global conditions are changing,” Rouhani said.
“The Iranian nation is smarter and wiser than to fall in the Zionist trap,” he said, adding that Israel aimed “to cause commotion and turmoil.”
Germany — one of the world powers part of the nuclear pact — echoed the E.U.’S call for avoiding escalation.
“A few weeks before the new US administration takes office, it is important to preserve the scope for talks with Iran so that the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program can be resolved through negotiations,” a spokesman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, German media reported.
Officials in Israel have not commented.
The killing added to soaring tensions in the region amid fears that a confrontation between Iran and the United States or Israel could erupt before Biden takes office.
The front page of Iran’s hard-line Kayhan newspaper warned Israel to await an “eye for an eye.” Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two Iran-backed Palestinian militias, condemned the assassination on Friday.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, another Iranian ally, said Friday that “the response to this crime” was in
Iran’s hands, Reuters reported.
Israel’s Channel 12 News reported Saturday that Israeli embassies around the world had been put on high alert.
The Pentagon announced Friday that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier had been deployed back to the Middle East following maritime exercises in the Indian Ocean.
While the timing of the announcement was unusual, the deployment, had been initiated before Friday’s attack to support U.S. troops withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a series of tweets Saturday warned that there would be “definitive punishment of the perpetrators” while Iran would continue “following the scientific and technological attempts of the martyr in all segments of his activity,” in a possible reference to Fakhrizadeh’s nuclear work.
Fakhrizadeh was widely regarded as the brains behind Iran’s nuclear program, including Tehran’s clandestine efforts to develop a nuclear bomb in the early 2000s.
The physics professor has been identified by intelligence officials as the head of the Amad Plan, the secret nuclear weapons research program that sought to develop as many as six nuclear bombs before Iranian leaders ordered a halt to the program in 2003.
Formerly a reclusive figure rarely seen in public, Fakhrizadeh has more recently allowed himself to appear on official Iranian websites, including during events held by Iran’s supreme leader.
“This brutal assassination shows that our enemies are passing through anxious weeks, weeks that they feel their pressure era is coming to an end and the global conditions are changing.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani