President Rouhani said on Saturday his country would respond "in due course" but that Fakhrizadeh's killing would not push Iran into making hasty decisions.
"Iran's enemies should know that the people of Iran and officials are braver than to leave this criminal act unanswered," he said in a televised cabinet meeting.
"In due time, they will answer for this crime," he added
(...)
This assassination follows the not-so-secret meeting last week in Saudi Arabia between the Saudi crown prince and Israeli prime minister - officially denied by the kingdom. It sent another signal that Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu see this window as their last best chance in a while to try to inflict a crippling blow on their arch-enemy Iran - a blow to also complicate an already challenging course for a new US team to re-engage with the Islamic Republic.
(...)
Fakhrizadeh has long been spoken about by Western security sources as extremely powerful and instrumental in Iran's nuclear programme.This assassination follows the not-so-secret meeting last week in Saudi Arabia between the Saudi crown prince and Israeli prime minister - officially denied by the kingdom. It sent another signal that Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu see this window as their last best chance in a while to try to inflict a crippling blow on their arch-enemy Iran - a blow to also complicate an already challenging course for a new US team to re-engage with the Islamic Republic.
(...)
According to secret documents obtained by Israel in 2018, he led a programme to create nuclear weapons.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he identified Fakhrizadeh as the head scientist in the programme, and urged people to "remember that name".
(...)
In 2015, the New York Times compared him to J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who directed the Manhattan Project that during World War Two produced the first atomic weapons.
