The US smuggled two Iranian Defence Ministry scientists out of the country only two weeks before the assassination of nuclear mastermind Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Ensaf News quoted a former security official as stating.
Ensaf News’s report has reportedly prompted the Iranian authorities to threaten the news website, which is known for its ties to reformist forces, and pressure it to remove the report from the website.
Quoting an unnamed former Iranian intelligence officer, Ensaf News, wrote that before Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, two “scientists” from the Sepand Institute affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Defense were smuggled out of the country by the United States.
The former officer also mentioned Fakhrizadeh had survived several unsuccessful assassinations, and that he was famous for being very difficult when it came to protection, refusing to be accompanied by guards.
Fakhrizadeh, a prominent commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) and one of the most important figures in Iran’s nuclear program, was killed in Absard, Damavand, on November 28, 2020, during an attack connected to the Israeli Mossad.
The security officer pointed to divisions and rivalries between Iran’s intelligence agencies and added that Fakhrizadeh’s name was leaked to the assassins following reports about the theft of the nuclear programme official documents by Israel.
Referring to the case of Maziar Ebrahimi, who was falsely accused of assassinating nuclear scientists, the former intelligence officer stated: “They might have done the same for the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, since they have failed to catch the real culprits”
Maziar Ebrahimi was charged in 2012 with involvement in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and remained in prison until 2014 when his innocence was proven.
In 2019, Ebrahimi told the story of how he was arrested and tortured, revealing that he was the victim of disputes between the Ministry of Intelligence and IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, which arrested, tortured, and imprisoned more than a hundred people without evidence to cover up their own failures.
Also read: Iran cozies up with Taliban, fearing ISIS threat in Afghanistan