‘Our response to the assassination of Fakhrizadeh will be extremely painful’: Iran

BEIRUT, LEBANON (7:15 P.M.) – Iran announced that its response to the killing of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh would be “extremely painful” for the forces behind the assassination.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that this matter would be in response to calls for restraint from Western countries, according to the state-owned Fars News Agency.

On Monday, Iran buried the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last Friday, after his car was targeted near the capital, Tehran.

The Iranian government accused Israel of carrying out the assassination, and Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif said that it “bears the fingerprints of the Israeli regime,” calling on the international community to “abandon double standards and condemn the terrorism of that country.”

No group or country has claimed responsibility for the assassination; however, a number of foreign nations have condemned the killing and called for cooler heads to prevail.

The killing of Fakhrizadeh comes nearly eleven months after the U.S. carried out the assassination of the late Quds Force commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani, and the Deputy Head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (Hashd Al-Sha’abi), Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandis, near the Baghdad International Airport.

Iran later retaliated by firing several missiles toward two Iraqi bases that were housing the U.S. forces in Iraq.