Iran’s high nuclear scientist awoke an hour earlier than daybreak, as he did most days, to review Islamic philosophy earlier than his day started.
That afternoon, he and his spouse would depart their trip residence on the Caspian Sea and drive to their nation home in Absard, a bucolic city east of Tehran, the place they deliberate to spend the weekend.
Iran’s intelligence service had warned him of a potential assassination plot, however the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, had brushed it off.
Convinced that Fakhrizadeh was main Iran’s efforts to construct a nuclear bomb, Israel had needed to kill him for not less than 14 years. But there had been so many threats and plots that he now not paid them a lot consideration.
Despite his outstanding place in Iran’s army institution, Fakhrizadeh needed to dwell a traditional life. He craved small home pleasures: studying Persian poetry, taking his household to the seashore, going for drives within the countryside.
And, disregarding the recommendation of his safety staff, he typically drove his personal automotive to Absard as an alternative of getting bodyguards drive him in an armored car. It was a critical breach of safety protocol, however he insisted.
So shortly after midday on Friday, Nov. 27, he slipped behind the wheel of his black Nissan Teana sedan, his spouse within the passenger seat beside him, and hit the highway.
An Elusive Target
Since 2004, when the Israeli authorities ordered its overseas intelligence company, the Mossad, to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the company had been finishing up a marketing campaign of sabotage and cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear gas enrichment amenities. It was additionally methodically selecting off the specialists considered main Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Since 2007, its brokers had assassinated 5 Iranian nuclear scientists and wounded one other. Most of the scientists labored straight for Fakhrizadeh (pronounced fah-KREE-zah-deh) on what Israeli intelligence officers stated was a covert program to construct a nuclear warhead, together with overcoming the substantial technical challenges of constructing one sufficiently small to suit atop one in every of Iran’s long-range missiles.
Israeli brokers had additionally killed the Iranian common accountable for missile growth and 16 members of his staff.
But the person Israel stated led the bomb program was elusive.
In 2009, successful staff was ready for Fakhrizadeh on the website of a deliberate assassination in Tehran, however the operation was referred to as off on the final second. The plot had been compromised, the Mossad suspected, and Iran had laid an ambush.
This time they have been going to strive one thing new.
Iranian brokers working for the Mossad had parked a blue Nissan Zamyad pickup truck on the aspect of the highway connecting Absard to the primary freeway. The spot was on a slight elevation with a view of approaching autos. Hidden beneath tarpaulins and decoy building materials within the truck mattress was a 7.62 mm sniper machine gun.
Around 1 p.m., the hit staff obtained a sign that Fakhrizadeh, his spouse and a staff of armed guards in escort vehicles have been about to depart for Absard, the place a lot of Iran’s elite have second properties and trip villas.
The murderer, a talented sniper, took up his place, calibrated the gun sights, cocked the weapon and flippantly touched the set off.
Memorials at Baghdad International Airport, Jan. 9, 2020, the place Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian army commander, was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike with the assistance of Israeli intelligence. In November of 2020, Israeli brokers assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh with a computerized 7.62-mm sniper machine gun able to firing 600 rounds a minute, kitted out with synthetic intelligence, multiple-camera eyes and operated by way of satellite tv for pc, that was smuggled into Iran piece by piece and re-assembled. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
He was nowhere close to Absard, nonetheless. He was peering into a pc display screen at an undisclosed location greater than 1,000 miles away. The complete hit squad had already left Iran.Reports of a Killing
The information experiences from Iran that afternoon have been complicated, contradictory and principally flawed.
A staff of assassins had waited alongside the highway for Fakhrizadeh to drive by, one report stated. Residents heard an enormous explosion adopted by intense machine gunfire, stated one other. A truck exploded forward of Fakhrizadeh’s automotive, then 5 or 6 gunmen jumped out of a close-by automotive and opened hearth. A social media channel affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard reported an intense gunbattle between Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards and as many as a dozen attackers. Several folks have been killed, witnesses stated.
One of essentially the most far-fetched accounts emerged a number of days later.
Several Iranian information organizations reported that the murderer was a killer robotic and that the complete operation was performed by distant management. These experiences straight contradicted the supposedly eyewitness accounts of a gunbattle between groups of assassins and bodyguards and experiences that a few of the assassins had been arrested or killed.
Iranians mocked the story as a clear effort to reduce the embarrassment of the elite safety pressure that failed to guard one of many nation’s most carefully guarded figures.
“Why don’t you just say Tesla built the Nissan, it drove by itself, parked by itself, fired the shots and blew up by itself?” one hard-line social media account stated.
Thomas Withington, an digital warfare analyst, advised the BBC that the killer robotic principle needs to be taken with “a healthy pinch of salt” and that Iran’s description seemed to be little greater than a group of “cool buzzwords.”
Except this time there actually was a killer robotic.
The straight-out-of-science-fiction story of what actually occurred that afternoon and the occasions main as much as it, printed right here for the primary time, is predicated on interviews with American, Israeli and Iranian officers, together with two intelligence officers conversant in the main points of the planning and execution of the operation, and statements Fakhrizadeh’s household made to the Iranian information media.
The operation’s success was the results of many elements: critical safety failures by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, intensive planning and surveillance by the Mossad, and an insouciance bordering on fatalism on the a part of Fakhrizadeh.
But it was additionally the debut check of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with synthetic intelligence and a number of digicam eyes, operated by way of satellite tv for pc and able to firing 600 rounds a minute.
The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the fight drone within the arsenal of high-tech weapons for distant focused killing. But in contrast to a drone, the robotic machine gun attracts no consideration within the sky, the place a drone may very well be shot down, and may be located wherever — qualities prone to reshape the worlds of safety and espionage.
‘Remember That Name’
Preparations for the assassination started after a collection of conferences towards the tip of 2019 and in early 2020 between Israeli officers, led by the Mossad director, Yossi Cohen, and high-ranking American officers, together with former President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the CIA director, Gina Haspel.
Israel had paused the sabotage and assassination marketing campaign in 2012 when the United States started negotiations with Iran resulting in the 2015 nuclear settlement. Now that Trump had abrogated that settlement, the Israelis needed to renew the marketing campaign to attempt to thwart Iran’s nuclear progress and pressure it to simply accept strict constraints on its nuclear program.
In late February, Cohen offered the Americans with an inventory of potential operations, together with the killing of Fakhrizadeh. Fakhrizadeh had been on the high of Israel’s hit listing since 2007, and the Mossad had by no means taken its eyes off him.
In 2018, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a information convention to indicate off paperwork the Mossad had stolen from Iran’s nuclear archives. Arguing that they proved that Iran nonetheless had an lively nuclear weapons program, he talked about Fakhrizadeh by identify a number of instances.
A photograph made obtainable by the Office of the Iranian Presidency of IranÕs President Hassan Rouhani, second from the left, at an exhibition in Tehran on the countryÕs nuclear program. Israeli brokers had needed to kill IranÕs high nuclear scientist for years. Then they got here up with a strategy to do it with no operatives current.(Office of the Iranian Presidency by way of The New York Times)
“Remember that name,” he stated. “Fakhrizadeh.”
The American officers briefed in regards to the assassination plan in Washington supported it, in response to an official who was current on the assembly.
Both international locations have been inspired by Iran’s comparatively tepid response to the U.S.’ assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian army commander killed in a U.S. drone strike with the assistance of Israeli intelligence in January 2020. If they might kill Iran’s high army chief with little blowback, it signaled that Iran was both unable or reluctant to reply extra forcefully.
The surveillance of Fakhrizadeh moved into excessive gear.
As the intelligence poured in, the problem of the problem got here into focus: Iran had additionally taken classes from the Suleimani killing — specifically, that their high officers may very well be focused. Aware that Fakhrizadeh led Israel’s most-wanted listing, Iranian officers had locked down his safety.
His safety particulars belonged to the elite Ansar unit of the Revolutionary Guard, closely armed and nicely skilled, who communicated by way of encrypted channels. They accompanied Fakhrizadeh’s actions in convoys of 4 to seven autos, altering the routes and timing to foil potential assaults. And the automotive he drove himself was rotated amongst 4 or 5 at his disposal.
Israel had used a wide range of strategies within the earlier assassinations. The first nuclear scientist on the listing was poisoned in 2007. The second, in 2010, was killed by a remotely detonated bomb hooked up to a motorbike, however the planning had been excruciatingly complicated, and an Iranian suspect was caught. He confessed and was executed.
After that debacle, the Mossad switched to easier, in-person killings. In every of the subsequent 4 assassinations, from 2010 to 2012, hit males on bikes sidled up beside the goal’s automotive in Tehran visitors and both shot him via the window or hooked up a sticky bomb to the automotive door, then sped off.
But Fakhrizadeh’s armed convoy, looking out for such assaults, made the bike methodology unattainable.
The planners thought of detonating a bomb alongside Fakhrizadeh’s route, forcing the convoy to a halt so it may very well be attacked by snipers. That plan was shelved due to the chance of a gangland-style gunbattle with many casualties.
The concept of a pre-positioned, remote-controlled machine gun was proposed, however there have been a bunch of logistical issues and myriad methods it might go flawed. Remote-controlled machine weapons existed, and several other armies had them, however their bulk and weight made them tough to move and conceal, and so they had solely been used with operators close by.
Time was working out.
By the summer time, it seemed as if Trump, who noticed eye to eye on Iran with Netanyahu, might lose the U.S. election. His seemingly successor, Joe Biden, had promised to reverse Trump’s insurance policies and return to the 2015 nuclear settlement that Israel had vigorously opposed.
If Israel was going to kill a high Iranian official, an act that had the potential to begin a conflict, it wanted the assent and safety of the United States. That meant appearing earlier than Biden might take workplace. In Netanyahu’s best-case situation, the assassination would derail any probability of resurrecting the nuclear settlement even when Biden received.
The Scientist
Fakhrizadeh grew up in a conservative household within the holy metropolis of Qom, the theological coronary heart of Shiite Islam. He was 18 when Iran’s Islamic Revolution toppled the nation’s monarchy, a historic reckoning that fired his creativeness.
He got down to obtain two desires: to develop into a nuclear scientist and to participate within the army wing of the brand new authorities. As an emblem of his devotion to the revolution, he wore a silver ring with a big, oval pink agate, the identical kind worn by Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and by Soleimani.
He joined the Revolutionary Guard and climbed the ranks to common. He earned a doctorate in nuclear physics from Isfahan University of Technology with a dissertation on “identifying neutrons,” in response to Ali Akbar Salehi, the previous head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency and a longtime buddy and colleague.
He led the missile growth program for the Guard and pioneered the nation’s nuclear program. As analysis director for the Defense Ministry, he performed a key position in growing homegrown drones and, in response to two Iranian officers, traveled to North Korea to affix forces on missile growth. At the time of his loss of life, he was deputy protection minister.
“In the field of nuclear and nanotechnology and biochemical war, Mr. Fakhrizadeh was a character on par with Qassem Soleimani but in a totally covert way,” Gheish Ghoreishi, who has suggested Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Arab affairs, stated in an interview.
When Iran wanted delicate gear or expertise that was prohibited below worldwide sanctions, Fakhrizadeh discovered methods to acquire them.
“He had created an underground network from Latin America to North Korea and Eastern Europe to find the parts that we needed,” Ghoreishi stated.
Ghoreishi and a former senior Iranian official stated that Fakhrizadeh was often known as a workaholic. He had a critical demeanor, demanded perfection from his workers and had no humorousness, they stated. He seldom took day off. And he eschewed media consideration.
Most of Fakhrizadeh’s skilled life was high secret, higher recognized to the Mossad than to most Iranians.
His profession could have been a thriller even to his youngsters. His sons stated in a tv interview that they’d tried to piece collectively what their father did primarily based on his sporadic feedback. They stated they’d guessed that he was concerned within the manufacturing of medical medicine.
When worldwide nuclear inspectors got here to name, they have been advised that he was unavailable, his laboratories and testing grounds off-limits. Concerned about Iran’s stonewalling, the United Nations Security Council froze Fakhrizadeh’s property as a part of a package deal of sanctions on Iran in 2006.
Although he was thought of the daddy of Iran’s nuclear program, he by no means attended the talks resulting in the 2015 settlement.
The black gap that was Fakhrizadeh’s profession was a serious motive that even when the settlement was accomplished, questions remained about whether or not Iran nonetheless had a nuclear weapons program and the way far alongside it was.
Iran has steadfastly insisted that its nuclear program was for purely peaceable functions and that it had little interest in growing a bomb. Ayatollah Khamenei had even issued an edict declaring that such a weapon would violate Islamic legislation.
But investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in 2011 that Iran had “carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.” They additionally stated that whereas Iran had dismantled its centered effort to construct a bomb in 2003, vital work on the challenge had continued.
According to the Mossad, the bomb-building program had merely been deconstructed and its part elements scattered amongst totally different applications and businesses, all below Fakhrizadeh’s course.
In 2008, when President George W. Bush was visiting Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert performed him a recording of a dialog Israeli officers stated befell a short while earlier than between a person they recognized as Fakhrizadeh and a colleague. According to 3 individuals who say they heard the recording, Fakhrizadeh spoke explicitly about his ongoing effort to develop a nuclear warhead.
A spokesperson for Bush didn’t reply to a request for remark. The New York Times couldn’t independently verify the existence of the recording or its contents.
Programming a Hit
A killer robotic profoundly adjustments the calculus for the Mossad.
The group has a long-standing rule that if there is no such thing as a rescue, there is no such thing as a operation, which means a foolproof plan to get the operatives out safely is crucial. Having no brokers within the subject ideas the equation in favor of the operation.
But an enormous, untested, computerized machine gun presents a string of different issues.
The first is the best way to get the weapon in place.
Israel selected a particular mannequin of a Belgian-made FN MAG machine gun hooked up to a complicated robotic equipment, in response to an intelligence official conversant in the plot. The official stated the system was not in contrast to the off-the-rack Sentinel 20 manufactured by the Spanish protection contractor Escribano.
But the machine gun, the robotic, its parts and equipment collectively weigh about 1 ton. So the gear was damaged down into its smallest potential elements and smuggled into the nation piece by piece, in varied methods, routes and instances, then secretly reassembled in Iran.
The robotic was constructed to slot in the mattress of a Zamyad pickup, a standard mannequin in Iran. Cameras pointing in a number of instructions have been mounted on the truck to present the command room a full image not simply of the goal and his safety element, however of the encircling atmosphere. Finally, the truck was filled with explosives so it may very well be blown to bits after the kill, destroying all proof.
There have been additional issues in firing the weapon. A machine gun mounted on a truck, even a parked one, will shake after every shot’s recoil, altering the trajectory of subsequent bullets.
Also, though the pc communicated with the management room by way of satellite tv for pc, sending knowledge on the velocity of sunshine, there can be a slight delay; what the operator noticed on the display screen was already a second previous, and adjusting the goal to compensate would take one other second, all whereas Fakhrizadeh’s automotive was in movement.
The time it took for the digicam pictures to achieve the sniper and for the sniper’s response to achieve the machine gun, not together with his response time, was estimated to be 1.6 seconds, sufficient of a lag for the best-aimed shot to go astray.
The AI was programmed to compensate for the delay, the shake and the automotive’s velocity.
Another problem was to find out in actual time that it was Fakhrizadeh driving the automotive and never one in every of his youngsters, his spouse or a bodyguard.
Israel lacks the surveillance capabilities in Iran that it has somewhere else, like Gaza, the place it makes use of drones to determine a goal earlier than a strike. A drone giant sufficient to make the journey to Iran may very well be simply shot down by Iran’s Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles. And a drone circling the quiet Absard countryside might expose the entire operation.
The resolution was to station a faux disabled automotive, resting on a jack with a wheel lacking, at a junction on the primary highway the place autos heading for Absard needed to make a U-turn, some three-quarters of a mile from the kill zone. That car contained one other digicam.
At daybreak Friday, the operation was put into movement. Israeli officers gave the Americans a remaining heads-up.
The blue Zamyad pickup was parked on the shoulder of Imam Khomeini Boulevard. Investigators later discovered that safety cameras on the highway had been disabled.The Drive
As the convoy left the town of Rostamkala on the Caspian coast, the primary automotive carried a safety element. It was adopted by the unarmored black Nissan pushed by Fakhrizadeh, along with his spouse, Sadigheh Ghasemi, at his aspect. Two extra safety vehicles adopted.
The safety staff had warned Fakhrizadeh that day of a risk in opposition to him and requested him to not journey, in response to his son Hamed Fakhrizadeh and Iranian officers.
But Mohsen Fakhrizadeh stated he had a college class to show in Tehran the subsequent day, his sons stated, and he couldn’t do it remotely.
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Supreme National Council, later advised the Iranian media that intelligence businesses even had data of the potential location of an assassination try, although they have been unsure of the date.
The Times couldn’t confirm whether or not they had such particular data or whether or not the declare was an effort at harm management after an embarrassing intelligence failure.
Iran had already been shaken by a collection of high-profile assaults in current months that along with killing leaders and damaging nuclear amenities made it clear that Israel had an efficient community of collaborators inside Iran.
The recriminations and paranoia amongst politicians and intelligence officers solely intensified after the assassination. Rival intelligence businesses — below the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard — blamed one another.
A former senior Iranian intelligence official stated that he heard that Israel had even infiltrated Fakhrizadeh’s safety element, which had data of last-minute adjustments to his motion, the route and the time.
From left: Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Donald Trump, and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain, stroll out to a balcony on the White House in Washington, throughout a signing ceremony for the Abraham Accords, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020. In November of 2020, Israeli brokers assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh with a computerized 7.62-mm sniper machine gun able to firing 600 rounds a minute, kitted out with synthetic intelligence, multiple-camera eyes and operated by way of satellite tv for pc, that was smuggled into Iran piece by piece and re-assembled. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
But Shamkhani stated there had been so many threats over time that Fakhrizadeh didn’t take them significantly.
He refused to trip in an armored automotive and insisted on driving one in every of his vehicles himself. When he drove along with his spouse, he would ask the bodyguards to drive a separate automotive behind him as an alternative of driving with them, in response to three folks conversant in his habits.
Fakhrizadeh could have additionally discovered the thought of martyrdom enticing.
“Let them kill,” he stated in a recording Mehr News, a conservative outlet, printed in November. “Kill as much as they want, but we won’t be grounded. They’ve killed scientists, so we have hope to become a martyr even though we don’t go to Syria and we don’t go to Iraq.”
Even if Fakhrizadeh accepted his destiny, it was not clear why the Revolutionary Guard assigned to guard him went together with such blatant safety lapses. Acquaintances stated solely that he was cussed and insistent.
If Fakhrizadeh had been sitting within the rear, it could have been a lot more durable to determine him and to keep away from killing anybody else. If the automotive had been armored and the home windows bulletproofed, the hit squad would have had to make use of particular ammunition or a robust bomb to destroy it, making the plan way more sophisticated.
The Strike
Shortly earlier than 3:30 p.m., the motorcade arrived on the U-turn on Firuzkouh Road. Fakhrizadeh’s automotive got here to a close to halt, and he was positively recognized by the operators, who might additionally see his spouse sitting beside him.
The convoy turned proper on Imam Khomeini Boulevard, and the lead automotive then zipped forward to the home to examine it earlier than Fakhrizadeh arrived. Its departure left Fakhrizadeh’s automotive absolutely uncovered.
The convoy slowed down for a velocity bump simply earlier than the parked Zamyad. A stray canine started crossing the highway.
The machine gun fired a burst of bullets, hitting the entrance of the automotive under the windshield. It is just not clear if these photographs hit Fakhrizadeh, however the automotive swerved and got here to a cease.
The shooter adjusted the sights and fired one other burst, hitting the windshield not less than thrice and Fakhrizadeh not less than as soon as within the shoulder. He stepped out of the automotive and crouched behind the open entrance door.
According to Iran’s Fars News, three extra bullets tore into his backbone. He collapsed on the highway.
The first bodyguard arrived from a chase automotive: Hamed Asghari, a nationwide judo champion, holding a rifle. He seemed round for the assailant, seemingly confused.
Ghasemi ran out to her husband.
“They want to kill me, and you must leave,” he advised her, in response to his sons.
She sat on the bottom and held his head on her lap, she advised Iranian state tv.
The blue Zamyad exploded.
That was the one a part of the operation that didn’t go as deliberate.
The explosion was supposed to tear the robotic to shreds so the Iranians couldn’t piece collectively what had occurred. Instead, a lot of the gear was hurled into the air after which fell to the bottom, broken past restore however largely intact.
The Revolutionary Guard’s evaluation — that the assault was carried out by a remote-controlled machine gun “equipped with an intelligent satellite system” utilizing synthetic intelligence — was right.
The complete operation took lower than a minute. Fifteen bullets have been fired.
Iranian investigators famous that not one in every of them hit Ghasemi, seated inches away, accuracy that they attributed to using facial recognition software program.
Hamed Fakhrizadeh was on the household residence in Absard when he obtained a misery name from his mom. He arrived inside minutes to what he described as a scene of “full-on war.” Smoke and fog clouded his imaginative and prescient, and he might scent blood.
“It was not a simple terrorist attack for someone to come and fire a bullet and run,” he stated afterward state tv. “His assassination was far more complicated than what you know and think. He was unknown to the Iranian public, but he was very well known to those who are the enemy of Iran’s development.”
