Leading Iranian Nuclear Scientist Assassinated as West and Israel Escalate Pressure

Leading Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahavadi was assassinated on November 27th near the capital Tehran. His car was reportedly ambushed by armed militants who managed to fatally injure him after clashing with his bodyguards. At least one explosion occurred during the armed clash, with Iranian media reporting that a suicide attacker was involved. Several other people were reportedly killed in the incident, according to official sources, with the final death toll and the nature of the attackers having yet to be confirmed. The Iranian Defence Ministry referred to the assailants as “armed terrorist elements,” indicating that they could have belonged to a number of Islamist groups many of which receive Western support. 

Fakhrizadeh was a professor of physics at the Imam Hussein University, and was considered a leading scientist in the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has been persistently accused by its Western adversaries of developing nuclear weapons, although the country has allowed for extensive international inspections of its nuclear facilities which have found no signs of such a program. The scientist’s assassination comes amid mounting pressure on Iran from the United States, Britain, France and their regional defence partner Israel, including military threats, international denunciation and major cyberattacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure. Israel has a long history of targeted assassinations of Iranian scientists, which was a strategy also pursued against Ba’athist Iraq in the 1980s. The leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, was also assassinated in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020, with Iran subsequently carrying out a retaliatory missile strike that caused over 100 American casualties in Iraq. Tensions two have remained high ever since.