Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose significance and death has been downplayed by Iran, was singled out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu as the architect behind the Islamic Republic’s alleged building of a nuclear bomb in a 2018 television broadcast after an Israeli commando team raided a storage facility and stole 5,000 pages of documents about the country’s nuclear programme.
Fakhrizadeh’s death in a skillfully planned ambush near the capital of Tehran is the latest in a string of covert attacks on Iranian scientists and government facilities that have escalated tensions between Iran and western powers. Iranian officials have attributed Fakhrizadeh’s assassination to Israel and vowed revenge.
Sanders, an outspoken supporter of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, cautioned against Fakhrizadeh’s assassination hindering President-elect Joe Biden’s negotiations with Iran. “As a new administration takes power, it was clearly intended to undermine US-Iran diplomacy. We must not allow that to happen,” he tweeted of the killing. “Diplomacy, not murder, is the best path forward.”
Top Israeli officials have not claimed involvement in the assassination. “I have no clue who did it. It’s not that my lips are sealed because I’m being responsible, I simply really have no clue,” Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi told N12’s Meet the Press, reports Reuters.
As US President Donald Trump’s Presidency comes to a close, many warn Fakhrizadeh’s assassination will likely heighten already elevated tensions as Tehran waits for Biden to take over the helm in Washington and, possibly, return to the nuclear deal. The President-elect has signaled he could seek to re-enter the nuclear agreement.
“In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for all parties to remain calm and exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid escalation which cannot be in anyone’s interest,” reads a statement from the European External Action Service, the foreign policy branch of the European Commission, which described the assassination as a criminal act that disregards respect for human rights.
President Hassan Rouhani described the Fakhrizadeh's assassination as "bait" from Iran's enemies.
“This savage assassination demonstrates that our enemies are in anxious weeks, as the era of their influence will wane and global circumstances will change,” he said at a Coronavirus Task Force meeting in Tehran on Saturday.
Describing the nuclear scientist as an “outstanding” and “unique” nuclear scientist, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said that the country's officials should be “investigating this crime and decisively punishing the perpetrators... and continuing the technical and scientific efforts of the martyred in every field that he was engaged in.”
