Abna24 – The assassination of Iranian prominent physicist and nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who played a leading role in the search for “homegrown test kits for COVID-19,” carries fingerprints of the Israel, which has long history of murdering scientific elites across parts of the world.
Dr. Fakhrizadeh, who headed the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted on Friday in a multi-pronged attack involving at least one explosion and small fire by a number of assailants in Absard city of Damavand County, Tehran Province.
Reacting to the brutal assassination, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that there were “serious indications” of an Israeli role. “Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice – with serious indications of Israeli role – shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.
The top Iranian diplomat said the assassination of the senior Iranian nuclear scientist bears the clear hallmark of atrocities committed by the Israel, which has already murdered a number of Iran’s scientific elites.
Zarif further raised awareness about Tel Aviv’s fingerprints in the murder and urged international denunciation and action. “Terror attack on our scientist was indubitably designed & planned by a terrorist regime & executed by criminal accomplices,” he wrote. Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi hailed Dr. Fakhrizadeh’s significant role in combating COVID-19 in Iran.
“One of the latest services of Martyr Fakhrizadeh was his outstanding role in the development of the first indigenous COVID-19 test kit, which is a great contribution to our national efforts in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic at a time when Iran is under inhumane sanctions of the United States, strictly preventing our access to humanitarian goods including medicines and medical equipment,” he said. The Iranian official also called the attack an act of state-sponsored terrorism.
