Iran’s supreme leader has vowed to retaliate for the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist.
On Saturday (Nov. 28), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “clear punishment” for those responsible for the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Some analysts say Friday’s assassination of Fakhrizadeh, the second senior Iranian military figure to be killed this year, underscores the Iranian government’s weakness in protecting its key officials and reflects the skill of Iran’s adversaries in removing them.
Iran said Fahrizadeh, 59, was killed in an armed attack during the day on Friday (Nov. 27) as he was traveling in a car to the northern town of Absard, about 90 kilometers east of the capital Tehran.
No group or individual immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Fakhrizadeh, who headed the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Defense Innovation and Research Organization, known by its Persian acronym SPND, and who, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, had previously led a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program launched in the late 1980s that was ostensibly abandoned in 2003.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has blamed Israel for Fakhrizadeh’s death.
In a televised cabinet meeting, Rouhani said, “The blood of the sons of Iran is once again on the evil hands of Global Arrogance and the mercenaries of the Zionists. “Global Arrogance” and Zionists are often used by Iranian leaders to refer to the United States and Israel.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh comes nearly 11 months after the killing of Iran’s top military commander, Qassem Soleimani. On January 3 of this year, the United States launched an airstrike in Baghdad to assassinate Soleimani. The U.S. government claimed it was a defensive operation to protect Americans abroad from Qassem Soleimani, who was leading the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.
University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau, a Middle East security expert, said in an interview with VOA’s Persian Unit that the assassinations of Fakhrizadeh and Suleimani were a major security failure by Iran’s leadership.
Juneau said, “We generally assumed that both men would be under the close protection of the Iranian regime.”
He added that the assassinations also underscored the relative strength of Iran’s adversaries.
Juneau said, “Whoever was responsible for killing Fahrizadeh showed great skill in conducting daytime operations on the outskirts of the capital and on the streets, and I suspect Fahrizadeh was still under protection,” Juneau said. “As for Suleimani’s killing, it was the result of the U.S. putting a lot of effort and resources into tracking him down, and the U.S. eavesdropped on his conversations to learn his whereabouts.”
Islamist-ruled Iran, which has denied developing nuclear weapons, blames its arch regional enemy Israel for Fakhrizadeh’s murder and has threatened harsh retaliation.
Israel, which Iran has long threatened to wipe out, has yet to comment. Israel and its main ally, the United States, have refused to rule out military action to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.
Fakhrizadeh is the fifth Iranian nuclear expert to be assassinated in the past decade. Iran has also blamed Israel for a series of previous bombings and shootings that have killed experts, two in 2010 and one each in 2011 and 2012. Again, Israel has neither admitted nor denied involvement in these assassinations.
Eric Brewer, a nuclear analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that Iran does not have a good track record of protecting its nuclear scientists in the past.
He also noted that Iran failed to stop the Israeli theft of nuclear files from Iranian warehouses in early 2018. Iran has questioned the authenticity of the stolen material, but U.S. intelligence officials have reviewed it and found it to be authentic.
Brewer said, “From the perspective of Iran and the scientists, they have reason to be concerned about the secrecy of their results and their ability to protect this type of sensitive work.”
Suzanne Maloney, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said in a tweet that Friday’s assassination raises more doubts about Iran’s security capabilities.
She tweeted, “What does it say about Tehran’s supposedly strong security forces and efforts for regional hegemony when the Iranian government repeatedly fails to prevent its rival agents from infiltrating the capital and stealing materials from warehouses filled with sensitive intelligence or assassinating its key officials?”
Alex Vatanka, director of the Middle East Institute’s Iran program, said in a Twitter response to Maloney that Iran “is always talking about a far larger game than it is capable of playing.”
“Imagine a group of potential regime insiders ready to work for a foreign power. At this rate, no one in Iran’s Islamic regime can escape the possibility of assassination.”
Recent Comments