Fakhrizadeh's son on assassination: Security team warned him about danger

"It wasn't a simple terror attack," he said. "The scene looked like a war zone."

DECEMBER 6, 2020 11:52

Members of Iranian forces carry the coffin of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during a funeral ceremony in Tehran on November 30. (photo credit: IRANIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/WANA/VIA REUTERS) — Members of Iranian forces carry the coffin of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during a funeral ceremony in Tehran on November 30.

(photo credit: IRANIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/WANA/VIA REUTERS)

The son of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last week, explained the details of his father's killing in an interview Friday night, according to N12.

He said that when his father was killed, it was "a war zone," and that he was killed by "four or five bullets" which were shot by mercenaries at short range. He went on to explain that his mother was also in the car but was unharmed, suggesting that the killing was a targeted assassination, N12 reported.

Fakhrizadeh's son also said that his father's security team warned him that he should not make the car trip due to a higher level of risk that day, N12 reported. "My father refused because he had an important meeting, and he was supposed to lecture to students. He insisted on returning to Tehran the same day," he said.

Fakhrizadeh was shot and killed in Damavand, east of Tehran. There have been competing narratives over the killing of the man who was at the pinnacle of Iran’s nuclear industrial complex.

Pictures from the scene showed two vehicles, one damaged in an explosion and another riddled with bullets in what appeared like a professional hit.

Fakhrizadeh was a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officer and headed Iran’s nuclear weapons project. He was a professor of physics at the Imam Hussein University in Tehran and was the former head of Iran’s Physics Research Center. He was the only Iranian scientist named in the IAEA’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. It said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to [Iran’s] nuclear program.”

In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reminded the Israeli public to "remember" Fakhrizadeh's name.

Seth J. Frantzman and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.