Top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated on November 27, 2020.

A New York Times article on Saturday said the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, used an AI-powered, Belgian-made FN MAG machine gun attached to an advanced robotic apparatus to remotely kill Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the scientist leading Iran’s nuke program, on November 27, 2020.

The astonishingly successful operation was executed without any agents being physically present at the assassination site, and was accurate enough not to harm anybody else other than the target. Fakhrizadeh’s wife was seated in the car along with him. (Times of Israel)

The New York Times interviewed American, Israeli and Iranian officials, “including two intelligence officials familiar with the details of the planning and execution of the operation,” to create an in-depth account of the assassination.

How it happened

Israel was determined to eliminate the Iranian scientist before Joe Biden’s potential ascendancy to the office of the US President. Biden was known to support a resurrection of the nuclear agreement with Iran.

The gun and its robotics, together weighing over a ton, were smuggled into Iran in small parcels and then reassembled inside a decrepit, abandoned-looking pick-up truck parked strategically at a turn on Fakhrizadeh’s known route. The vehicle was also packed with explosives to self-destruct after the assasination.

Fakhrizadeh (pictured above) was returning with his wife in a black, unarmored Nissan Teana sedan from their vacation home on the Caspian Sea. En route to his country house in Absard, east of Tehran, he was at the wheel of the vehicle, while his security personnel were travelling behind in separate cars.

According to the NYT, on news that Fakhrizadeh was on the move, “the assassin, a skilled sniper, took up his position, calibrated the gun sights, cocked the weapon and lightly touched the trigger” — all from an “undisclosed location thousands of miles away” from Iran.

Artificial intelligence was used to adjust the gun’s aim for factors such as time lags, recoil and the speed of the victim’s car.

The scientist’s convoy slowed at a speed bump just ahead of the parked vehicle containing the machine gun; and this was enough for visual identification of Fakhrizadeh.

The operatives let loose a fusillade of bullets that led the victim to stop, come out of the car, and crouch behind the door of the car. Three more bullets then struck him on the spine.

The truck containing the gun thereafter exploded but the equipment was heavily damaged but remained “largely intact.”

However, “the souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing,” the NTT said.

Related Story: AI-Controlled Gun Used to Kill Iranian Nuclear Scientist, Claims IRGC

Image Credit of Car: Wikimedia Commons; Image Credit of Fakrizadeh: Wikimedia Commons