Iran: ‘Smart satellite-controlled machinegun’ killed scientist

The weapon used in the assassination was placed on a pick-up truck and operated remotely via a video camera, official says.

The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month was carried out remotely with artificial intelligence and a machinegun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system”, a senior commander has said.

Iran has blamed Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian programme to develop nuclear weapons capability. Tehran has long denied any such ambition.

“No terrorists were present on the ground … Martyr Fakhrizadeh was driving when a weapon using an advanced camera zoomed in on him,” Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency, quoted Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as saying at a ceremony on Sunday.

“The machinegun was placed on a pick-up truck and was controlled by a satellite.”

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any involvement in the killing, and one of its officials suggested the Tasnim report on the method used was a face-saving move by Iran.

In the past, however, Israel has acknowledged pursuing clandestine intelligence-gathering operations against the nuclear programme of its archenemy Iran.

The Islamic Republic has given contradictory details of Fakhrizadeh’s death in a daytime November 27 ambush on his car on a highway near Tehran.

Speaking from Tehran, The sequence of events reported by commander Fadavi paints a picture that there were no actual physical people that carried out any component of this attack.”

“The details that we are hearing is that there was a gunfight and then a large explosion, all of which were carried out by remote control.