Iran admiral: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh killed by satellite-controlled machinegun

Various accounts of scientist's death emerge after attack last month

Servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza carry the coffin of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Mashhad, Iran. WANA via REUTERS

Servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza carry the coffin of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Mashhad, Iran. WANA via REUTERS

Servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza carry the coffin of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Mashhad, Iran. WANA via REUTERS

Servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza sit near the coffin of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Mashhad, Iran. WANA via REUTERS

A coffin with an image of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, can be seen among the servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad. WANA via REUTERS

A coffin with an image of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, can be seen among the servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad. WANA via REUTERS

The scene of the attack that killed prominent Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, outside Tehran. WANA via REUTERS

Iranians walk past next to a huge poster of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in a street in Tehran. EPA

A protester holds a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, during a demonstration against his killing in Tehran. WANA via REUTERS

A protester holds a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, during a demonstration against his killing in Tehran. WANA via REUTERS

Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (R) during a meeting with Iranian supreme leader (unseen) in Tehran on January 23, 2019. EPA/IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S OFFICE HO

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points at a screen with an image of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during a news conference at the Defence Ministry of in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. Reuters

The US Navy’s USS Nimitz aircraft carrier was ordered back to the Arabian Gulf to show capability as it withdraws troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and to deter adversaries moving against the US, US Fifth Fleet said. AFP PHOTO / US NAVY

The deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Sunday that he believed a satellite-controlled machinegun with artificial intelligence was used in last month's assassination of a top nuclear scientist.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was driving on a motorway outside Iran's capital Tehran with 11 guards on November 27 when the machinegun zoomed in and fired 13 rounds, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told Iranian media.

The machinegun was mounted on a Nissan pick-up truck and was being "controlled online" by satellite.

It used an "advanced camera and artificial intelligence" to carry out the killing, Adm Fadavi told the Mehr news agency.

It is unclear who was behind the killing, but Iran's state-run Press TV claimed that weapons "made in Israel" were found at the scene. Iran has yet to provide any pictures of equipment reportedly recovered at the ambush site.

President Hassan Rouhani last week accused Israel of being responsible for the assassination, saying it was acting as a mercenary for the US.

Western and Israeli governments have long held the belief that Fakhrizadeh was the architect of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. He was reportedly close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a member of the IRGC. He was identified in 2011 by the International Atomic Energy Agency as playing a leading role in Iran's nuclear weapons research.

Various accounts of the scientist's death emerged after the attack, with Iran's defence ministry initially saying he was caught in a firefight with his bodyguards.

Fars news agency claimed "a remote-controlled, automatic machinegun" killed him, without giving any sources.

A failure of counterintelligence 

Iran's conflicting explanations for what happened led to speculation that the IRGC is trying to deflect attention from what amounts to an embarrassing security breach on its soil.

For such a complex operation to be successful, each element would have to work perfectly, including communication and data links between the various devices used.

Furthermore, the equipment would almost certainly have been custom-made, since military "remote weapons systems" are too large for most civilian vehicles. Equipment for the operation would therefore have had to be smuggled into Iran – itself a dangerous operation.

While the use of a sophisticated remote control weapon cannot be ruled out, the idea that assassins apparently had free reign in Iran to have killed five nuclear scientists since 2010 could be seen as a source of humiliation for the IRGC, who may prefer to portray the killing as an unavoidable act.