The murder of Iran's top Nuclear Scientist was just the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations of Iranian officials. Now the details of his death have been released to the public for the first time.
Top Iranian Nuclear Scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed in November of 2020. The scientist was shot near Tehran by a one-ton automatic gun, that was smuggled to Iran piece-by-piece by Israeli secret services. This information was revealed on November 10 by the British-based Jewish Chronicle.
Why was Mohsen Fakhrizadeh so important? Fakhrizadeh was 59-year-old Iranian physicist of great importance; he headed a department of a Ministry which deals with research and innovation. Among other things, this department also deals with anti-nuclear defense. According to Israel and the West, Fakhrizadeh was the architect and the head of Iran’s secret Nuclear Program. He allegedly led an Iranian program called Amad, which dealt with the use of nuclear technology in Iran’s weapons, although the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has claimed that this program was cancelled at the beginning of the 2000’s.
Two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew attention to Fakhrizadeh. “Remember that name,” the Israeli PM said during his speech. According to Netanyahu’s words Iranians continued their nuclear weapons program secretly within the organization under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense. In January 2018, Mossad became intensely interested in Fakhrizadeh. At that time, materials on Iran’s clandestine nuclear program were obtained. The agents managed to get 50,000 pages of documents and 163 CDs that contained full details about the program. According to Israeli security expert Jacob Nagel, the documents that Mossad had were proving that Fakhrizadeh was working on the development of several nuclear warheads, “each one able to cause five Hiroshimas”. Fakhrizadeh was destined to “depart”, using a Mossad slang.
Mossad began to work on the preparation of the assassination in March 2020. Twenty Mossad operatives, including both Israelis and Iranians, were working together. The spies had the task of monitoring the scientist and mapping his daily activity, spending months learning his routine. “For eight months, they breathed with the guy, woke up with him, slept with him, travelled with him. They would have smelled his aftershave every morning, if he had used aftershave,” a source told the JC. Despite his circle of bodyguards, agents managed to track down that every Friday Fakhrizadeh leaves Tehran with an armed column and heads to a villa outside the city. The assassination was scheduled for November 27.
As expected, on November 27, the scientist traveled with his wife in a black Opel along with twelve bodyguards to Absard, a small city just east of Tehran. At the side of the road, the spies left a parked Nissan pick-up truck, which had a special remote-controlled weapon installed inside. The one-ton weapon was smuggled by agents bit by bit to the country for several months. It was so heavy because it contained a bomb to destroy all evidence once the killing is finished. Iran had suggested before that the scientist had been killed by a weapon controlled by a satellite, but that does not match the information provided by Israel.
When the vehicle passed a designated spot, the so-called “father of the bomb” Fakhrizadeh lost his life after being hit by thirteen bullets that were fired from the automated gun. The weapon was so accurate, that neither his wife (who was sitting ten inches away in the front seat) nor anyone on the security team was injured, which was the intention. Iranian officials have claimed before that the head of the Fakhrizadeh’s security was hit, but these reports contradict that. Sources told the JC that the strike succeeded partly because the Iranian security services were too busy watching suspected political dissenters.
The attack was carried out without American involvement, as the report adds. According to major intelligence sources, US officials received only “little information” before the attack.
Israeli analysts have concluded that the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has extended the time that it will take for Iran to reach development of a nuclear bomb, which could now take between three and half months to two years, with some of the senior intelligence officials saying it could even be up to about five years. The Iranian regime itself has assessed that it will take six years to find a replacement for Fakhrizadeh.
The Iranian President responded to the assassination and vowed to avenge Fakhrizadeh’s death. He called the victim a martyr and said that his death would not stop Iran.