SULAIMANI (ESTA) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint on Friday, after an Iranian nuclear scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret atomic weapons program was assassinated near Tehran.
“We have noted the reports that an Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated near Tehran today. We urge restraint and the need to avoid any actions that could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region,” Guterres’ spokesman Farhan Haq said, according to Reuters.
Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, was “seriously wounded” when assailants targeted his car before being engaged in a gunfight with his bodyguards, the defense ministry said, AFP reported.
It added that Fakhrizadeh, who headed the ministry’s research and innovation organization, was later “martyred” after medics failed to revive him.
Fakhrizadeh has long been described by Western, Israeli and Iranian exile foes of Iran’s clerical rulers as a leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003. Iran has long denied seeking to weaponize nuclear energy.
Fakhrizadeh is thought to have headed what the U.N. nuclear watchdog and U.S. intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons programme in Iran, shelved in 2003.
He has the rare distinction of being the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear programme and whether it was aimed at developing a nuclear bomb.
The assassination threatens to escalate tensions between Iran and the US and its close ally Israel, with some warning of the risk of a major conflict in the Middle East.
Iran pointed the finger at Israel, while implying the killing had the blessing of the departing Trump. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter of “serious indications of [an] Israeli role”.
“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators,” Zarif said in a tweet.
Iran’s U.N. envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi wrote in a letter to Guterres and the U.N. Security Council on Friday that there were “serious indications of Israeli responsibility” in the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.
“Warning against any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel against my country, particularly during the remaining period of the current administration of the United States in office, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its rights to take all necessary measures to defend its people and secure its interests,” Ravanchi, wrote in the letter, which was seen by Reuters.
The military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to “strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr”.
“In the last days of the political life of their … ally [Trump], the Zionists seek to intensify pressure on Iran and create a full-blown war,” Hossein Dehghan tweeted.
Fakhrizadeh was the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear programme. The report said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear programme”.
He was a central figure in a presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons.
“Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Netanyahu said at the time.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Middle East subcommittee, said on Twitter “this assassination does not make America, Israel or the world safer.”
Michael Mulroy, a senior Pentagon official earlier during Trump’s administration, said Fakhrizadeh’s killing would set back Iran’s nuclear programme and alert levels should be raised in countries where Iran could retaliate.
(Esta Media Network/Agencies)
