The father of Iran’s nuclear programme is assassinated

FEW KILLINGS arouse Iran’s feelings of victimhood and outrage like the assassination of its nuclear scientists. To get a sense of their prominence, head to the Holy Defence Museum, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ monument to its martyrs, perched on the heights overlooking the capital, Tehran. Between the rubbish bins stencilled with Stars of David, as an insult to Israel, and the railings made out of mortars stand the cars in which four of Iran’s nuclear scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012. Each is riddled with bullets and coated with red tulips, an Iranian symbol of mourning. Plaques shaped like tears tell visitors their death was the doing of “global arrogance headed by the US and Israel”. Now there will be a fifth.On November 27th Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabada was shot dead while driving in Absard, a city 80km (50 miles) east of Tehran, by what Iran’s defence ministry called “armed terrorists”. Mr Fakhrizadeh was notionally a physics professor, teaching at the Imam Hossein University in Tehran, an institution linked to the armed forces. In fact, he had been at the heart of Iran’s clandestine nuclear ambitions for decades.