Remote-Control Killing: Iran Says Top Nuclear Scientist Assassinated by Machine Gun Guided Via Satellite

In an interview with state-controlled television, one of Fakhrizadeh’s sons, Hamed Fakhrizadeh, said his father had been warned by his security team on the day he was assassinated not to travel.

But the top scientist, who kept a low-profile, had said that, due to a class he was teaching as well as an “important meeting,” he needed to return to Tehran.

“Full-Blown War Zone”
Hamed Fakhrizadeh described the scene of the assassination, which he came to shortly after the attack, as a “full-blown war zone.”

His brother, Mehdi Fakhirzadeh, said in the same interview that his father was shot at a close range of four or five meters and that their mother, who he said had sat on the ground next to Fakhrizadeh, was unhurt.

“She said ‘I don’t understand how the bullets didn’t hit me. I went there so that the bullets would not hit [Fakhrizadeh],’” he quoted his mother as having said.

The comments could either confirm Fadavi’s account regarding a “satellite-controlled” weapon equipped with facial-recognition technology or suggest that snipers shot and killed the nuclear scientist.

Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and the various accounts of how it was carried out have raised many questions, including the possible presence of “infiltrators” within Iran’s security apparatus who would have precise information about the movement of the country’s leading nuclear scientist, who was mentioned by name in a 2018 presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If the official account regarding the remote-controlled killing is true, it is clear that the attack was well-planned and that someone had installed the alleged “remote-controlled” gun and a bomb on the truck before driving it to the site of the assassination. Some reports said the owner of the Nissan pickup truck had left Iran shortly before the attack.

One major question is how the special equipment needed for the sophisticated attack was smuggled into Iran.

It is also not clear why Fakhrizadeh — who knew that he was a wanted man due to his role in the country’s nuclear program and who, according to officials, had survived previous failed assassination attempts — had decided to get out of his vehicle during the attack. It’s especially strange because several media accounts say his vehicle was bullet-proof.

Fakhrizadeh’s sons confirmed earlier reports that their father left his vehicle because he thought it had broken down after hearing the bullets hitting the car.

But it is unclear why he didn’t ask someone on his security team to find out what was happening instead of putting himself at risk by leaving the vehicle.

Officials have vowed to avenge Fakhrizadevh’s killing, which came nearly a year after the U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, who led the IRGC Quds Force in charge of the group’s regional activities. Soleimani was killed in a drone attack near Baghdad in January in an attack that the U.S. claimed responsibility for.

Golnaz Esfandiari is a senior correspondent with RFE/RL.This article is reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).