Leader of Iran’s nuclear program assassinated
Tehran points the finger at Israel
An Iranian scientist named by the West as the leader of the country’s disbanded military nuclear program was killed on Friday in an ambush on the outskirts of Tehran, authorities said.
Iran’s foreign minister alleged the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh bore “serious indications” of an Israeli role. Israel, long suspected of killing several Iranian nuclear scientists a decade ago, declined to immediately comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once told the public to “remember that name” when talking about Fakhrizadeh.
The killing risks further raising tensions across the Mideast, nearly a year after Iran and the US stood on the brink of war when an American drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Trump himself retweeted a posting from Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, an expert on the Israeli Mossad intelligence service, about the killing. Melman’s tweet called the killing a “major psychological and professional blow for Iran.” Details about the slaying remained slim in the hours after the attack, which happened in Absard, a village just east of the capital that is a retreat for the Iranian elite. Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh. As Fakhrizadeh’s sedan stopped, at least five gunmen emerged and raked the car with rapid fire, the Tasnim news agency said. Fakhrizadeh died at a hospital after doctors and paramedics couldn’t revive him. Others wounded included Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards. Photos and video shared online showed a Nissan sedan with bullet holes in the windshield and blood pooled on the road.
While no one claimed responsibility for the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pointed the finger at Israel, calling the killing an act of “state terror.”
Meanwhile, an Iranian diplomat suspected of masterminding a thwarted, state-sponsored bomb attack against an exiled Iranian opposition group in France did not show up at a courthouse in Bel
An old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh.
gium on Friday, the opening day of his trial on terror charges, invoking his diplomatic immunity.
More than two years after the cross-border police operation that foiled the plot, Assadollah Assadi and three other suspects face up to 20 years in prison on charges of “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.”
“The Iran state conspires, threatens and carries on attacks and executions,” said lawyer Georges Henri Beauthier. “We have irrefutable proof that the Iranian state gave orders from Tehran and authorized the death of thousands of people.”