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Assassination of a nuclear scientist: The dramatic tale of Israel's robot killer
 [Western Standard] The entire operation took less than a minute.In all, fifteen bullets were fired, leaving Iran's top nuclear scientist dead. Iran’s intelligence service had warned him of a possible assassination plot but the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, had brushed it off. That afternoon, he and his wife would leave their vacation home on the Caspian Sea and drive to their country house in Absard, a sleepy town east of Tehran, where they planned to spend the weekend. Disregarding the advice of his security team, he often insisted on driving his own car instead of having bodyguards drive him in an armored vehicle — a breach of security that had been noticed. According to a special report in the New York Times, shortly after noon on Friday, Nov. 27, he slipped behind the wheel of his black Nissan Teana sedan, his wife in the passenger seat beside him, and hit the road. Since 2007, Israeli agents of the Mossad had assassinated five Iranian nuclear scientists and wounded another. Most of the scientists worked directly for Fakhrizadeh (pronounced fah-KREE-zah-deh) on what Israeli intelligence officials said was a covert program to build a nuclear warhead. But the man Israel said led the bomb program was elusive. In 2009, a hit team was waiting for Fakhrizadeh at the site of a planned assassination in Tehran, but the operation was called off at the last moment, the New York Times reported. The plot had been compromised, the Mossad suspected, and Iran had laid an ambush. This time they were going to try something new — a killer robot. Related: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: 2022-06-04 Iran probes death of another Revolutionary Guard colonel, denies assassination Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: 2022-05-27 Israel eliminates IRGC officer, who was deputy head of covert unit Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: 2022-05-26 NYT: Israel said to tell US it killed IRGC officer, who was deputy head of covert unit Posted by: Besoeker 2022-09-05 |
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