The Iranian government is blaming Israel for the Friday killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Dr. Mohsen Farkhrizadeh, at a roadside attack. Iran is pointing accusing fingers at Israel and has sworn to avenge the killing of the scientist. The death of Farkhrizadeh is coming on the breakdown of the meeting that held between Israel and Saudi Arabia a few days ago.
Top military and political officials in Iran have described Farkhrizadeh’s death as a murder and warned there will be a reprisal to the enemy.
“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Foreign Affairs Minister of Iran Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter. “This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators. Iran calls on int’l community—and especially the EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”
An adviser to the supreme leader of Iran, Hossein Dehghan, said Iran will descend heavily on the killers of Farkhrizadeh since his killing was apparently a ploy to draw out Iran for war, he reasoned. The military chief of Iran, Mohammad Bagheri, called Israel a “malicious Zionist entity” that must be punished severely for the death of his country’s top nuclear scientist. He said his country will retaliate.
Israel has not offered any response to Iran’s threats and has not accepted responsibility for Farkhrizadeh’s death.
“In the last days of their gambling ally’s political life, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full-blown war,” Hossein Dehghan wrote on Twitter. “We will descend like lightning on the killers of this oppressed martyr, and we will make them regret their actions!”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia denied that a meeting ever held with Israeli officials, but the publication said a meeting did hold between the two governments and that the United States can confirm this. With the breakdown in negotiations for peace, it is anticipated that negotiations may be brokered again when President-elect Joe Biden comes to power.
President Donald Trump tried to bring peace to the Middle East and almost achieved it with the signing of the Abraham Accord which seeks to restore peace between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. If the meeting between Israeli and Saudi leaders had scaled through, it would have been another feather to Trump’s cap before he finally leaves office in January 2021. But maybe things will work out with Biden in office.
“Saudi Arabia is trying to figure out how best to use this to repair its image in Washington and generate goodwill with Biden and Congress,” Wall Street Journal reports.
Source: newsweek.com
