Iran's government faces increasing pressure from hardliners to respond to the killing of a top nuclear scientist
Credit: Reuters
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Tuesday denied knowledge of an air strike reported to have killed an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander on the Iraq-Syria border over the weekend.
Iraqi security and militia officials told Reuters on Monday that the commander, whose identity they did not confirm, was killed alongside three men travelling in the same vehicle as him. Two officials told Reuters the vehicle was struck shortly after crossing into Syria with a load of weapons from Iraq.
Israel has launched strikes against an array of Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria the past week, though there was no claim of responsibility for the drone strike said to have killed the IRGC commander, named in some reports as Muslim Shahdan.
Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said he was unaware of those reports during a weekly foreign ministry briefing in Tehran, adding that “it seems to be fake news," in remarks carried by the semi-official ISNA news agency. He directed further queries to the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
The apparent denial comes amid heightened tensions regionally and calls for retaliation domestically after the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated outside Tehran on Friday in an attack that Iran has blamed on Israel.
Mr Khatibzadeh warned Iran would unleash “maximum pain” on Fakhrizadeh’s assassins, adding that the regime would not heed international calls for restraint.
The killing has raised the prospect of military confrontation in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency and could make it harder for president-elect Joe Biden to fulfil his campaign promise to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal that President Trump abandoned in 2015.
On Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei declared that parliament had no right to amend the nuclear agreement reached with world powers in 2015, after hardliners passed a bill demanding that Iran disregard all restraints on its nuclear programme.
Parliamentarians have been calling for an end to international inspections of the country’s nuclear sites in the wake of Friday’s attack. The draft bill passed on Tuesday also called for Iran to pursue uranium enrichment of 20 percent, beyond the limit of 3.67 percent set by the deal.
Mr Rabiei however said adherence to the nuclear agreement was the responsibility of the National Security Council, who would decide whether to curtail inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to state-run ISNA.
Iran’s intelligence ministry meanwhile released photos of four suspects it claims were involved in Fakhrizadeh’s killing, according to an Iranian news website, in another change to the official narrative of the assassination.
Iran officials have released contradictory explanations of how the assassination of a top nuclear scientist took place
Credit: WANA news agency via Reuters
The ministry believes the suspects may have fled towards the Iraqi frontier and has distributed photos of the four men to hotels across Iran, according to Gooya News, a Farsi website run by exiled Iranians.
“The intelligence ministry is focusing its efforts to arrest the suspects on the Iran-Iraq border region as it believes the assassins have fled to the safety of the Kurdish areas where anti-Iranian regime armed groups have their bases,” the report said.
The identification of suspects contradicts an explanation provided at the funeral for Fakhrizadeh on Monday by the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who said the operation was carried out “using electronic equipment and no one was present at the scene.”
That version was amplified by the semi-official Fars News Agency, which said “no human assets were present at the scene of the assassination and the shooting was carried out only with automated weapons.”
The differing narratives may be the result of blame-shifting between the intelligence ministry and a parallel unit in the IRGC, which reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The Rouhani government has indirectly blamed the IRGC for Fakhrizadeh’s death, with ISNA reporting Mr Rabiei as saying “if their forces were only slightly more vigilant this assassination would not have happened.”
The office of Ayatollah Khamenei is reported to be furious with this latest assassination of a top official and has ordered a review of the government’s protection units.
Protection of senior officials has likely been increased with nuclear staff a top priority.
While most Iranian nuclear figures live low profile lives under assumed identities, several individuals have been named by US sanctions as being connected to Iran’s nuclear programme. These include the deputy head of Iran’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, AEOI, Javad Karimi Sabet and Mohammad Ghannadi Maragheh, named as the Deputy Head of Nuclear Planning and Strategic Supervision in the AEOI.
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