(REUTERS): Iran’s president has accused Israel of killing its high-ranking nuclear scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb programme.
Iran’s clerical and military rulers have threatened revenge for assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Iranian media said died in hospital after assassins gunned him down in his car near Tehran.
In a statement, President Hassan Rouhani said, “Once again, the evil hands of global arrogance were stained with the blood of the mercenary usurper Zionist regime – a term for Israel.”
“The assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh shows our enemies’ despair and the depth of their hatred. His martyrdom will not slow down our achievements,” Iran’s president added.
The assassination threatens to escalate tensions between Iran and the United States and its close ally Israel, with some warning of the risk of a major conflict in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has promised to retaliate for Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and said his nuclear work would continue. “The scientist was martyred by criminal and cruel mercenaries,” he said, and called for perpetrators to be punished.
In light of the assassination, Khamenei further said Iranian authorities must seriously consider and follow up on two issues. “First is following up on this crime and decisively punishing its perpetrators, and the other, following up on the scientific and technical endeavors of the martyr in all the sectors he was working,” he added.
Fakhrizadeh had long been suspected by Western, Israeli and Iranian exile foes of the Islamic Republic to have masterminded what they said was a covert atomic bomb programme.
He was believed to have headed what the UN nuclear watchdog and US intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons programme in Iran, which the Islamic republic said it shelved in 2003.
He 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 IAEA’s report said that he oversaw activities in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear programme within the so-called AMAD Plan.
