Assassinated Iranian Scientist Was Seen as a Threat To Israel

Israel's Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen admitted that his country was monitoring Iranian scientist Mohsen Fajrizade because he was leading projects that were supposed to "endanger" the entire world.

RELATED:

Iran Calls on the International Community to Confront Israel

"We had detected Fajrizade and we were monitoring him because we knew that what he was doing was a project that would endanger not only Western Asia but the entire world," Cohen said, as reported by Al-Mayadeen.

According to this official, Israel believes that Iran is moving strongly towards becoming "a nuclear power." The Israeli state, however, "will not allow" that to happen.

Without mentioning his country's role in the murder of the Persian physicist, Cohen said Iran's nuclear scientists "cannot sleep well," knowing that what happened to Fajrizade last week could happen to each of them as well.

Fajrizade, who was killed on November 27 in a terrorist attack near Tehran, headed the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND).

In addition, he was among the five Iranians on the list of the 500 most powerful people in the world, according to the US magazine Foreign Policy.

The Iranian authorities accuse the US and Israel of being behind this act of "state terrorism" and assured that they will respond in the most forceful way possible.

On Wednesday, a US government official told CNN that “in the past, the Israelis have shared information with the U.S. about their targets and covert operations before carrying them out. Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fajrizade… had been a target for the Israelis for a long time."

In this regard, William McRaven, a retired admiral of the US Naval Force, said that Iran knows or suspects that Israel is responsible for the attack on Fajrizade.