we start this out with breaking news and
iran's defense ministry has confirmed
that one of the country's top nuclear
scientists has been assassinated
iranian media outlets say mussin
fakhrazadeh
died of his wounds after gunmen fired on
his car fakhrazadeh has long been
regarded by
israel and western intelligence agencies
as the mastermind behind the country's
covert nuclear weapons programme
well in the past few minutes iran's
foreign minister has accused israel of
being behind the killing
he wrote this tweet terrorists murdered
an
imminent iranian scientist today this
cowardice with serious indications of
israeli role
shows desperate warmongering of
perpetrators
iran calls on the international
community and especially the eu to end
their shameful double standards and
condemn
this act of terror
that tweet just posted a short time ago
well iranian state media
have said that one of the country's top
nuclear scientists
had been assassin assassinated and press
television
also quoted unofficial sources as saying
that as well let's get more on this now
and we can speak to
uh margie that who joins us now afshar
from
the bbc uh arabic service even um
persian service sorry forgive me um what
do we know on this hour
um we we know that mr fakizade
was in a car with a number of other
people we don't know where
who those people were they said close
relatives
inside a car they were first approached
by a pickup truck which was apparently
um like bomb laden that there was an
explosion
and then we like local people say they
heard a lot of gunshots
and based on the pictures that we see
apparently they were they were like
assassinated
at the at the other place it took the
iranian
like state media an hour to confirm the
death because they said
his body has been transferred to a
hospital but then they confirmed
the death and death of massafa zadeh who
is known as
iran's abdul radhakhan abdul rahman the
top
pakistani scientist who was behind the
was mastermind of the nuclear program
and
this man which we know we don't know
much about but
he has been regarded as the mastermind
of iran's nuclear program
in the late 1990s and early 2000s
when according to allegations iran was
moving towards
a building a nuclear bomb and from there
when when western
officials and the iaea uh started like
learning about this they demanded to
interview him
they have been there has been demands of
the iaea to interview mr fakher but
it's a demand that that never came true
and they they could never
interview with him and in one of the
latest reports they said
we cannot talk about the extent of
iran's nuclear program
unless we talk to mr fakuzade yes the
two go together
as you were saying to me before when we
were analyzing this breaking news before
coming on air there's very little known
about him in terms of public profile you
were saying that you know the picture
behind us here is just one of
a couple one of probably two pictures of
that we only have
we have only seen two pictures of him
this is one of them
the other one is the one israeli prime
minister benjamin netanyahu usually uses
in his press conferences two years ago
when he was using a picture he said
remember this name because you're going
to hear about him
a lot more he's a very mesophagis was a
very secretive man he
we nev we've never seen him in public in
iran
and um he was regarded sometimes even
they
we used to hear he's dead maybe he's not
alive
so very secretive and an assassination
like this
is quite unprecedented in iran a big
blow to iran's security forces
who who can lose a man like him who has
been like
under definitely a special uh security
um you know they've been watching him
all the time and then
this happened so i think hard questions
will be asked today
and we've heard from iran just a
statement saying that they will avenge
the death the assassination as they have
done for other scientists in the past
what did you read into that yeah we we
had like um
a decade ago a number of other a number
of top
nuclear scientists in iran were killed
at the time
it was the iranians blamed the israelis
the israeli officials have got a policy
of not confirming and not
denying a policy which we expect they
would use
in the coming days probably but as you
as you heard
the iranian um foreign minister is
already pointing the finger
at the israelis because as i said like
we had another report two months ago
about
israeli officials or or or they have or
they had
ordered uh that this is a new york times
report that's saying
uh that uh they killed numbered al
qaeda's number two in tehran
a a like two months ago and then we
learned about it two weeks ago that it
was the israeli officials who ordered
that assassination
on behalf of the americans so as i said
security situation in iran is very tight
and now
the security forces need to answer very
hard questions
now as to how he was able to be targeted
in this way and you think maybe
in the coming days we'll get a clearer
picture of how this assassination was
carried out
obviously we will get we'll get a better
picture
as you know this has been uh this has
been
i mean since uh president donald trump
trump came to power in the united states
it's been
very hard for iran to keep up with with
all the
all the the attempts to first we had the
assassination of general qasim
in iraq and then we had this these
assassinations of al-qaeda forces
like operatives in iran two months ago
and now
they're the father of iran's nuclear
program
so these are unprecedented moments for
iran and as we know
president trump is going to leave office
in about
two months so many analysts are now
saying
oh we think that israel is trying to
achieve as much as they can
before president trump is out of office
uh incredible developments uh
there and uh yeah thank you so much
imagine i know you're gonna be uh
talking us through this
for some hours to come uh majid that
offshore there from the bbc persian
service thank you on that breaking news
that muhammad
martin even fakhrazadi has been
assassinated in iran one of iran's
eminent
top scientists are there more on that to
come