Mohsen Sazegara: Assassination of Fakhrizadeh is a Major Failure; Primary Blame Lies with Mostafa Khamenei
Mohsen Sazegara says the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of the key figures in Iran’s nuclear program, is “a major defeat and failure for the country’s intelligence apparatus.”
These days, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and its minister are at the forefront of Iran’s news; from Mahmoud Alavi’s claim that he had prior knowledge of Fakhrizadeh’s assassination to announcements about the possibility of changing the Supreme Leader’s fatwa on nuclear weapons.
Mohsen Sazegara, a political activist and analyst, told Voice of America that Iran’s intelligence and security agencies have launched a “who was it, who was it, it wasn’t me” game in the Fakhrizadeh assassination case and are blaming each other for shortcomings stemming from a “major defeat and failure.”
Mr. Sazegara, referring to a Jewish Chronicle report that attributes one of the reasons for the success of the Fakhrizadeh assassination operation to the preoccupation of Iran’s intelligence and security agencies with monitoring and surveilling political opponents, told Voice of America: “The reality is that a large portion of the country’s intelligence capabilities are directed toward suppression internally, but those sections dealing with counter-espionage and fighting intelligence organizations of other countries, particularly the Israelis, are separate from these sections.”
This political analyst believes that “the primary blame falls on the office of overall information protection that is in the Supreme Leader’s office, under the supervision of Mostafa Khamenei and the Supreme Leader himself, with Asghar Hejazi in charge, and that agency is responsible for coordinating seventeen intelligence organizations of the country.”
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, a Revolutionary Guards officer and person connected to Iran’s nuclear program, was killed on November 27, 2020 in Absard, Damavand, 80 kilometers east of Tehran by gunfire. Since his death, contradictory reports have been circulating.
On Monday night, February 9, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi referred to other details of Fakhrizadeh’s killing that match Reuters reports. He said that a member of the (Iranian) armed forces played a role in the killing along with others. He did not specify which military or Revolutionary Guards group this person belonged to. Sepah Hefazat Ansar al-Mahdi, a subdivision of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, is responsible for protecting senior officials of the Islamic Republic.
The United States has not taken a specific position on this matter. However, the then-U.S. President retweeted the news of Fakhrizadeh’s killing on November 27 on his Twitter account.
Source: Voice of America
