Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom American and Israeli intelligence have long charged was behind secret programs to design an atomic warhead, was shot and killed on Friday, Nov. 27, as he was traveling in a vehicle in northern Iran, Iranian state media reported. Fakhrizadeh was shot as his car was driving through the countryside town of Absard, in the Damavand region. State media accounts said that he had been gravely wounded in the attack, and that doctors tried to save him in the hospital, but could not.
The assassination, whether by the U.S. or the Mossad, could be in retaliation for Iran’s increased efforts to use better centrifuges and its stock of uranium, which has grown significantly since the U.S. abandoned the 2015 JCPOA agreement. How this assassination would affect any attempt to revive the agreement is not clear. The Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official, Michael P. Mulroy, said, according to the New York Times, that the death of Fakhrizadeh was “a setback to Iran’s nuclear program.” “He was their senior-most nuclear scientist and was believed to be responsible for Iran’s covert nuclear program,” Mulroy enthused in an email, and further stated, hopefully, “He was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force.”
