Alwaght- Iran's Foreign Minister suggested on Sunday that the recent assassination of a senior Iranian nuclear scientist bears the clear hallmark of atrocities committed by the Israeli regime, which has already murdered a number of Iran's scientific elites.
Tweeting in German, Zarif cited “serious indications of Israel’s role” in the Friday assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near the capital Tehran.
Terroristen ermordeten einen ausgezeichneten iranischen Wissenschaftler. Diese Feigheit, bei der ernsthafte Hinweise auf Israels Rolle gibt, ist Ausdruck der Kriegstreiberei der Täter aus Verzweiflung. 1/2
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 29, 2020
The Iranian scientist, who headed the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged attack involving at least one explosion and machinegun fire by a number of assailants in Absard city of Tehran Province’s Damavand County.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country’s nuclear agency, has likewise suspected Israeli involvement in both the assassination and a July incident at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. “It looks like the Zionist regime [of Israel] has a role in these issues,” AEOI Spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Saturday.
Zarif condemned the “cowardice” that characterizes the assassination as “an expression of the desperate warmongering of its perpetrators.”
Iran appelliert an internationale Gemeinschaft, insbesondere an die EU, ihre beschämenden Doppelstandards aufzugeben und diesen Akt des Staatsterrors zu verurteilen. 2/2
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) November 29, 2020
Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, a military advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, issued similar comments earlier. The Israeli regime was seeking to “create an all-out war” in the dying political tenure of its “gambling ally (US President Donald Trump)” by risking escalation with the Islamic Republic, he said.
No party has yet claimed responsibility for the atrocity.
However, the United States and Israel have, throughout the entire lifespan of Iran’s nuclear energy program, been changelessly trying to demonize it. The duo that are each other’s strongest allies, have worked tirelessly to try and restrict Iran’s nuclear work through international bodies or coercive and unlawful measures.
Tel Aviv has assassinated several Iranian scientists in the past.
The occupying regime, which is the Middle East’s sole possessor of nuclear weapons, persuaded Washington to leave a historic nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers in 2018 and restore the "toughest" sanctions that the agreement had lifted.
This is while the Islamic Republic has provided unstinting cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United Nations’ nuclear agency has, by its own admission, subjected Iran’s nuclear work to the most extensive and recurrent examinations.
Iran urges world to condemn act of state terror
Zarif said Iran appeals to the international community, particularly the European Union, to abandon its shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror.
Despite condemning the assassination on Saturday, the EU stopped short of denouncing it as an instance of terrorism and only called it a “criminal act” that countered the bloc’s values.
The German tweet by the Iranian top diplomat followed a series of tweets in various languages, in which he similarly 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 in English. “Shameful that some refuse to stand against terrorism and hide behind calls for restraint,” Zarif added in an apparent jibe at the EU, whose repetitive-sounding statement similarly urged all concerned parties to refrain from escalation.
In a message in Russian, Zarif also called the assassination “a flagrant violation of international law” against a country, which itself has “so far been at the forefront of the fight against terrorism in order to establish peace and stability in the region and the world.”
A Chinese-language tweet by the foreign minister also called on the international community to build a consensus to counter tension and adventurism in the region.
Fakhrizadeh to be laid to rest Monday
Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry announced that a commemoration ceremony and subsequent burial would be held for Fakhrizadeh on Monday.
The ceremony, it noted, would be attended by the victim’s survivors and the military's top brass.
Fakhrizadeh’s remains were taken to the Holy Shrine of Hazrat Masumeh in the central city of Qom for prayers prior to the funeral procession on Sunday morning.
The scientist’s body was flown to the holy city of Mashhad on Saturday, when it was taken inside the Holy Shrine of the Eighth Shia Imam, Imam Reza (PBUH) as part of a religious ceremony.
