Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, during his weekly press conference on Sunday, denied a New York Times report describing the November assassination of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, according to Iran International TV.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in Tehran on November 26. The killing was carried out by the Mossad, The Times reported. According to the report, the gun was a modified Belgian-made FN MAG machine gun attached to a robot and powered by artificial intelligence.
The Times said its information came from interviews with US, Israeli and Iranian officials, “including two intelligence officials familiar with the details of the planning and execution of the operation.”
Khatibzadeh denied the report’s claims, saying Iranian intelligence has all the details of the incident, including all the people involved.
At first, there were reports of witnesses seeing two of the assassins at the scene. But two days after the assassination, a report by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-affiliated Fars News Agency said there had been no assassins on the scene and that the weapon was operated from afar.