TEHRAN — On November 27, 2020, Israeli spies assassinated a high-profile Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, thinking it would slow down Iran’s progress. Evidence show that the Israelis have got it completely wrong.

The assassination against Mohsen Fakhrizadeh took place in the Abe-Sard region of Damavand County, about 40 kilometers northeast of Tehran.  

The terrorists blasted a pickup - a Nissan sedan - laden with explosives on the way of the car carrying Fakhrizadeh and then started shooting at his car and security guards.

Fars reported that three to four terrorists were killed in the armed clash.

Fakhrizadeh was the only scientist whose name had been mentioned by the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018. He said, “Remember the name, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.”

Experts then inferred this act as a direct threat against Fakhrizadeh’s life. 

Israeli media had announced that the plan for the assassination had failed last year. They also claimed that the name of Fakhrizadeh had been released to Israeli spy agency Mossad by the United Nations.

Then Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, “Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”

“Iran calls on int'l community—and especially EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror,” the former foreign minister asserted.

The former head of Israel's Mossad spy agency gave the most direct acknowledgement on June 10 that the Tel Aviv regime was behind the recent sabotage attacks on Iran's nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz and assassinating nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

When asked about sabotage in the Natanz facility, the interviewer asked Yossi Cohen where he'd take them if they could go there, and he said, "to the cellar," where "the centrifuges used to spin."

“It doesn’t look like it used to look,” he added.

Cohen was the person who presented Fakhrizadeh’s assassination plan to former U.S. president Donald Trump and former CIA chief Gina Haspel. 

A report by the New York Times indicated that Trump personally gave green light to the operation. 

Fakhrizadeh’s assassination was not Israel’s sole attempt to shut off or delay Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. In 2021, Israelis launched two cyberattacks on the Natanz enrichment facility, as well as a sabotage attack by a drone on the Tesa centrifuge manufacturing site in Karaj. 

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), who spoke on national TV on November 25, said Iran now possesses 30 kilograms of %20 enriched uranium. 

The sabotage attempts have perturbed a majority of Israeli politicians. Some MPs in Israel have been unsettled over these attempts, saying that the sabotage acts will only strengthen Iran. The division among the Israelis is growing bigger and bigger every day. Some politicians believe that by making such strikes on Iran, Israel will lose the United States, and its regional and European allies and should stop such acts. 

Their judgment is based on Iran’s behavior since last year. Since the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, Iran has been able to actively increase its remedial measures, which started in 2019 in response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Iran now possesses institutionalized nuclear knowledge that cannot be stopped by eliminating a person or two. Iran continued advancing its peaceful nuclear program, and it is now stronger than last year. It’s hard for the Israelis to digest the bitter truth, but this is how Iran is.