Iran’s military chief of staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri warned of “severe revenge” for those behind the assassination Friday of a top nuclear scientist outside Tehran.
“Terrorist groups and therefore the refore the leaders and the perpetrators of this cowardly attempt should know that severe revenge awaits them,” he said during a tweet reported by state press agency IRNA.
Bagheri called the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “a bitter and heavy blow” and added “we assure (Iranians) that we’ll not rest until we’ve chased and punished” those involved.
Fakhrizadeh was “seriously wounded” when assailants targeted his car before being engaged during a gunfight together with his security team, Iran’s defence ministry said during a statement.
It added that Fakhrizadeh, who headed the ministry’s reasearch and innovation organisation, was later “martyred” after medics did not revive him.
Fakhrizadeh, once described by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, had been travelling during a car near Absard city in Tehran province’s eastern Damavand county.
Read also: Breaking: Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh got assassinated
A state television report on the assassination described him together “of our country’s nuclear scientists” and said that Israel “had an old and deep enmity towards him”.
Iran’s secretary of state Mohammad Javad Zarif said there have been “serious indications of an Israeli role” within the scientist’s assassination.
“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.
“This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators,” he added.
He also called on the international community to “end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”
Fakhrizadeh’s assassination comes but two months before Joe Biden is to require office as US president.
Biden has promised a return to diplomacy with Iran after four hawkish years under incumbent US President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and commenced reimposing crippling sanctions.
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