IRGC member facilitated the murder of Iran’s nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, minister

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In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, right, sits in a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 23, 2019. Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist that Israel alleged led the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program until its disbanding in the early 2000s was killed in a targeted attack that saw gunmen use explosives and machine gun fire Friday Nov. 27, 2020, state television said. Two others are unidentified. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

Iran’s Minister of Security and Intelligence, Mahmoud Alawi, announced that a member of his country’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) provided the means to assassinate nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. 

Alawi pointed out, in an interview with Iranian TV, that “we informed the Revolutionary Guard of the existence of a plot to assassinate Fakhri Zadeh in the same place he was assassinated five days before , but the presence of a member of the armed forces who facilitated the assassination hindered the thwarting of the operation.”

The assassination  of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh  last November was carried out by a highly trained hit squad of 62 people — pouncing in six vehicles after the local power supply was cut, according to local reports.

The killers — who Iranian officials have insisted were sent by Israel — included a team of 50 giving “logistical support” to the dirty dozen who carried out the actual ambush , sources told leading Iranian journalist Mohamad Ahwaze.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh died following the attack in Absard, east of Tehran. Pic: IRIB/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

All involved had “entered special training courses, as well as security and intelligence services abroad,” Ahwaze tweeted, as translated by ELINT News.

“The team knew exactly the date and course of the movement of the Fakhrizadeh protection convoy in the smallest details,” Ahwaze’s sources told him, allowing them to cut the scientist off as he went to his private villa in Absard.

Shortly before Fakhrizadeh drove through their ambush site, the team “cut off the electricity completely from this area” to slow reports of their assassination and any calls for help, the reporter said. 

Fakhrizadeh was traveling in the middle of three bulletproof cars, with the killers striking after the first car entered a roundabout, the report said.

A booby-trapped Nissan was then detonated to block the car behind Fakhrizadeh — as 12 gunmen pounced on him, arriving in a Hyundai Santa Fe and four motorbikes, Ahwaze tweeted.

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