Iran’s Revolutionary Guards told local media on Sunday (December 6) that the assassination of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was carried out by a satellite-controlled machine gun with “artificial intelligence”.
Fakhrizadeh was a top nuclear scientist in Iran and was also a was a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed outside of Iran’s capital Tehran when machine gun “zoomed in” on his face and fired 13 rounds, said rear-admiral Ali Fadavi.
Fadavi told Mehr news agency that the machine gun was mounted on a Nissan pickup and “focused only on martyr Fakhrizadeh’s face in a way that his wife, despite being only 25 centimetres (10 inches) away, was not shot,”.
It was being “controlled online” via a satellite and used an “advanced camera and artificial intelligence” to make the target, he added.
Fadavi said that Fakhrizadeh’s head of security took four bullets “as he threw himself” on the scientist and that there were “no terrorists at the scene”.
Iran has blamed Israel’s Mossad, the secret intelligence agency and the exiled opposition group the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) for the assassination.
State-run Press TV had previously said “made in Israel” weapons were found at the scene of the assassination.
This is the second high profile assassination of a senior Iranan leader in recent time after the United States killed Qasem Soleimani the head of Revolutionary Guard Corps.