IRAN’S TOP NUCLEAR SCIENTIST SHOT, KILLED

Iran’s top nuclear scientist, who U.S. and Israeli intelligence have long charged was behind secret programs to design an atomic warhead, was shot and killed in an ambush Friday as he was traveling in a vehicle in northern Iran, Iranian state media reported.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, believed to be 59, has been considered the driving force behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program for two decades and continued to work after the main part of the effor t was quietly disbanded in the early 2000s, according to U.S. intelligence assessments and Iranian nuclear documents stolen by Israel.

One U.S. official — along with two other intelligence off icials — said Israel was behind the attack on the scientist.

It was unclear how much the United States may have known about the operation in advance, but the two nations are the closest of allies and have long shared intelligence regarding Iran. The White House and CIA declined to comment.

Gunmen waited along the road and attacked

Fakhrizadeh as his car was driving through the countryside town of Absard, in the Damavand region, according to off icial Iranian media and state television.

The state media accounts said that Fakhrizadeh had been gravely wounded in the attack and that doctors tried to save him in the hospital but could not.

Iranian off icials, who have long maintained that their nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes, not for weapons, called the attack an act of terror and vowed to take revenge.

“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote on Twitter. “This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”

Zarif, a U.S.-educated diplomat who is one of Iran’s most recognizable f ig ures, said in the post that the international community should “end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”

The Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy off icial, Michael Mulroy, said the death of Fakhrizadeh was “a setback to Iran’s nuclear program.”

“He was their seniormost nuclear scientist and was believed to be responsible for Iran’s covert nuclear program,” Mulroy said in an email. “He was also a senior off icer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force.”