NYT: Zionist Entity Behind Hit on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

The report came after several Iranian officials pointed the finger at the Zionist entity for the terrorist attack which took place at Absard city east of Tehran on Friday.

The Times report said it was not clear how much Washington knew ahead of the attack, though it noted that the Zionist entity and the US work closely on issues pertaining to Iran.

An unnamed Israeli official told Kan news Friday that “without Fakhrizadeh it will be very hard for Iran to advance its military [nuclear] program.”

The killing of Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a series of assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran in recent years that the Islamic republic has blamed on Israel. Israeli TV coverage noted that Friday’s attack was far more complex than any of those previous incidents.

In Washington, an official told CNN the administration was closely following the assassination, which “would be a big deal.”

In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted: “The real tools of creating a nuclear weapon are capacity, smart people, money. Those are the things that help you build out a nuclear weapons program.”

The former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Patrick Mulroy, told the newspaper Fakhrizadeh was “their senior-most nuclear scientist and was believed to be responsible for Iran’s covert nuclear program.”

“He was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force.”