An unspecified number of people allegedly involved in the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist last month have been arrested, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an adviser to the Iranian parliament speaker, said on Tuesday, according to the semi-official news agency ISNA.
"The perpetrators of this assassination, some of whom have been identified and even arrested by the security services, will not escape justice," ISNA quoted Amir-Abdollahian as telling Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam TV.
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Mohsen Fakhrizadey, Iran's top nuclear scientist who was assassinated last month in an attack attributed to the Mossad
(Photo: AP)
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down in November in an attack attributed to the Mossad.
On Monday, Images of an Israeli flag hanging atop a banner reading "Thank you Mossad" on a bridge in Tehran spread across social media overnight, in the aftermath of the assassination.
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Israeli flag, banner saying 'thank you Mossad' hanging on a billboard in Tehran after the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
(Photo: Twitter)
An Iranian social media observer using the Twitter handle Vahid Online, published the photos which he claimed to have received from the Iranian capital.
"The open-source intelligence social media account Intelli Times tweeted that it was able to verify the authenticity of the photos and video based on the vehicles seen in the video and the Kalleh Dairy advertisement behind the flag," The Jerusalem Post reported.
Iranian law bans the use of Israeli flags, symbols or signs. Iranians and visitors to the country associated or allegedly associated with Israel have ended up imprisoned or executed in the past, according to the Post.
Iran publicly blames Israel for the killing of Fakhrizadeh, which it claims was carried out without direct on-the-ground human interaction and utilizing AI, and managed to by-pass up to 11 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) guards protecting him.
Fakhrizadeh - who was a commander in the IRGC - was labeled the "father of Iran's nuclear program" and various security analysts have assessed that he was likely high up on a list of potential Israeli targets.
Israel - as is its usual modus operandi - has made no comment on whether it carried out the attack on Fakhrizadeh, although Iran has vowed vengeance and refused to continue abiding by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and threatened to increase uranium enrichment to up to 20 percent - far in excess of the stipulations of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Reprinted with permission from i24NEWS