Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Iran vows to avenge killing of top nuclear scientist ‘in due time’

President Hassan Rouhani blames Israel for attack as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls for ‘definitive punishment of the perpetrators’

Iran’s president has vowed to retaliate for the assassination of a top nuclear scientist after blaming Israel for the attack.

Hassan Rouhani said the Islamic Republic would respond to the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “in due time”.

“Once again, the evil hands of global arrogance and the Zionist mercenaries were stained with the blood of an Iranian son,” he said, using terms that officials use to refer to Israel.

Mr Rouhani also claimed that Fakhrizadeh’s death would not stop Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described Fakhrizadeh as “the country’s prominent and distinguished nuclear and defensive scientist”. 

Mr Khamenei said his nation’s first priority after the killing was the “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it”.

Fakhrizadeh, 59, was targeted in the town of Absard, about 50 miles east of central Tehran. Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying the scientist. Witnesses described a gunfight between unknown assailants and his bodyguards and photos of the scene showed blood splattered on the windshield.

The precision of the attack prompted analysts to supect the involvement of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. The office of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously accused Fakhrizadeh of being the head scientist in a programme to create nuclear weapons, has declined to comment.

Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Mr Netanyahu, said on Saturday he had “no clue” who was behind the killing. “It’s not that my lips are sealed because I’m being responsible, I really have no clue,” he told N12 News, which also reported that Israel’s embassies had been placed on alert.

The scene of the attack on prominent Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in a town outside Tehran. (Reuters)

The killing has also renewed fears that Iran could strike back against the US, as it did earlier this year when a drone strike killed a top Iranian general.  

Hours after the attack, the Pentagon announced it had brought the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier back into the Middle East, saying “it was prudent to have additional defensive capabilities in the region to meet any contingency”.

Germany, a party to the nuclear pact, and UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for restraint from all sides.

Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded by tweeting that it was “shameful that some refuse to stand against terrorism and hide behind calls for restraint”.

In Tehran, a small group of hard-line protesters burned images of Trump and president-elect Joe Biden and the flags of Israel and the USA.

Fakhrizadeh’s widow appeared unnamed on state television in a black chador, saying his death would spark a thousand others to take up his work.

“He wanted to get martyred and his wish came true,” she said.

Additional reporting by agencies