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Military personnel carry the coffin of the scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh through Tehran
Photo: Uncredited / dpa
The Iranian nuclear physicist and rocket expert Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in an attack, was buried in the capital Tehran on Monday.
The ceremony was broadcast live on state television.
Because of the corona crisis, only family members of the scientist and high-ranking generals were allowed to attend the funeral.
The 63-year-old Fakhrizadeh was shot dead in a suburb of Tehran on Friday.
The perpetrators have not yet been identified, but the Iranian leadership blames "local mercenaries" from the US and Israel for the attack.
There are contradicting reports and speculations about the course of the attack.
Initially, it was said that Fakhrizadeh and his team had been shot by at least six attackers.
Pictures from the crime scene showed bullet holes on the windshield of a vehicle.
Now the news portal Al-Alam reports that there were no attackers at all and that the attack was carried out with a "satellite-controlled weapon" made in Israel.
The head of the intelligence service responsible for the case, Mahmud Alawi, did not want to comment on the speculations before the end of the investigation.
However, the Security Council spoke of a "technically professional attack".
In the past few days there has also been criticism of the country's security forces.
It is said that they could have foreseen the attack and prevented it.
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In Tehran, people pray at the coffin of the murdered Mohsen Fachrisadeh
Photo: - / dpa
It had apparently been clear to high Iranian authorities that Fakhrizadeh was the target of attacks.
"We knew that he had been threatened with assassination on several occasions and that he was being followed," said Defense Minister Amir Hatami.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called him the "father of the Iranian nuclear program," while the US media called him "the number one target" of the Israeli secret service Mossad.
"Our enemies know that no crime in Iran will go unanswered and unpunished," said Defense Minister Amir Hatami in the funeral speech.
The deadly attack will not stop the progress of the Iranian nuclear program.
On the contrary: Scientists would now continue Fakhrizadeh's path "even more consistently".
Hardliners demand revenge
The hardliners in the country are demanding vengeance for the murder.
Your mouthpiece, the newspaper »Kejhan«, even demands a military attack on the Israeli port city of Haifa.
President Hassan Rohani, however, warns against a drastic reaction, since this is exactly what the assassins wanted to do to provoke a new conflict with Iran.
It is unclear what role Fakhrizadeh actually played.
According to official information, he was head of the research and innovation department of the Iranian Ministry of Defense.
Defense Minister Hatami said he was the highest-ranking official who "directed nuclear defense."
He played "an important role in defense innovations."
However, official information and the actual significance of the murdered person could differ.
"Those who really understand its precise everyday role in Iran's nuclear activities do not speak," wrote expert Karim Sadjadpour from the US Institute Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Twitter.
"And those who talk don't know."
Pictures published after Fakhrizadeh's death show him in 2019 meeting Iran's highest spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - an indication of his possible position in the country's power structure.
It would "probably take months, if not years, to assess the full consequences of his death," wrote the expert Sadjadpour.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suspected Mohsen Fakhrizadeh of leading "activities in support of a possible military dimension of the nuclear program" since the early 2000s, which, according to the UN organization, had started in the late 1980s.
In March 2007, Fakhrizadeh was sanctioned by the UN Security Council along with other "persons who were involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities" for Iran.
In Security Council Resolution 1747, he was named "Senior Scientist" in the Department of Defense and "Former Head of the Physics Research Center."
Iran refused to question the researcher by the IAEA.
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