Yesterday afternoon someone assassinated yet another scientist working on Iran’s nuclear programme. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh headed up the ministry of defence’s research and innovation organisation, and he was ambushed and killed in his car just east of Tehran, by gunmen who opened fire on him and his bodyguards.
I’ve been writing about Iranian nuclear scientists getting whacked for almost a decade now, with my book on Iran’s nuclear programme published in an updated edition this month. It appears that another cycle of nuclear violence is starting once again – and Fakhrizadeh is the most important hit yet. He genuinely was at the heart of the Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Indeed, in 2018 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled him out in a public presentation on Iran’s nuclear programme. ‘Remember that name,’ he told his audience. An injunction someone clearly took to heart. The Americans, too, had Fakhrizadeh’s number. In 2015 the New York Times described him as the ‘closest thing Iran has to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who guided the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapon.’
The Iranians are reacting accordingly to his death. ‘Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,’ tweeted Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. ‘This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role – shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators Iran calls on int’l community – and especially EU – to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.’
That the Israelis popped him is a given. They’ve been doing this for a decade and the MO is always pretty much the same. And besides, no one else does targeted assassinations quite like this in the region. Of course, it’s not Mossad agents on the ground. For the actual wet work Israel tends to use the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a cult-like organisation that fought with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War.
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