[Craving even more FPM content? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more. Click here to sign up.]

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was a nuclear physicist and the father of Iran’s nuclear program. In 2020, while driving to his country house outside Tehran, he was shot by a rifle timed to go off just as his car passed by. The rifle was fired remotely, by someone who was thousands of miles away, in Israel. He then staggered out of the car, badly wounded, but still alive, and was finished off by riflemen somewhere on the side of the road. More on the meticulous planning of his assassination over many years, on the hesitation by one head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, and the go-ahead given to the killing of Fakhrizadeh by his successor, Yossi Cohen, as well as the way Fakhrizadeh almost escaped death, can be found here: “Inside the risky shooting orders behind the assassination of Iran’s nuclear chief – exclusive,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2025:

The founder and chief of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated on November 27, 2020, with Iran pointing the finger at the Mossad. Israel, even after the June conflict with Iran, has not taken responsibility for the episode.

While many details of Fakhrizadeh’s assassination were previously disclosed by The Jerusalem Post and other media outlets, there is one new major detail that has not been reported to date.

At a key point during the operation to kill Fakhrizadeh, he was hit by gunfire from his assassins while inside his car.

The Post understands, however, that operation commanders believed Fakhrizadeh was still alive and might survive, and that the operation should continue until his death was confirmed.

The operation commanders were right: Fakhrizadeh, though shot, managed to get out of the car and was still staggering on his feet, when he fell and was shot again with a rifle volley. This second set of riflemen remained in the area until Fakhrizadeh had been shot repeatedly, and they had satisfied themselves that he was dead.

It was so important to remove Fakhrizadeh from the playing field that it was worth investing additional time during which aspects and assets of the assassination plan would be dangerously more exposed, i.e., the assassins were more likely to be found and seized once they had opened fire, and Iranian security forces were actively trying to find the source of the gunfire.

It turned out that their suspicions were correct.

Fakhrizadeh, though wounded, was able to make it out of his car and started to move away from the scene, potentially to safety and medical attention, which could have kept him alive.

Yet, because the assets were kept in place, the assassins managed to resume gunfire on Fakhrizadeh….

The second burst of gunfire, directed at Fakhrizadeh after he had spilled, wounded, out of the car, was presumably not from the same rifle that had first been fired remotely, by a gunman thousands of miles away in Israel. This second rifle must have been fired, repeatedly, by a sniper on the side of the road, who put himself in great danger of being caught or killed. Fortunately, he managed to escape, in a vehicle that had been pre-positioned nearby.

Israeli intelligence sources later confirmed to the Post that this was not science fiction and that a remote-controlled gun was in fact the weapon used, specifically because it was believed that it would be more precise and only strike Fakhrizadeh, and not his wife, who was also traveling with him….

Think of the solicitude of Mossad, trying hard to avoid killing Fakhrizadeh’s wife. And yet we are told that Israel commits “genocide.”

The official version from Iran did not reveal that a second burst of gunfire, from gunmen not in Israel but near the target, was needed to kill Fakhrizadeh. The reason for this is clear: if Iran had admitted to that version, and had been unable to capture the person or persons responsible for finally killing him, it would look even more pitiful in the eyes of the Iranian public.

It is now the job of Cohen’s successors in the Mossad and the IDF to keep Iran from the bomb, knowing that Israeli military intelligence said in the late 1990s that absent Israeli intervention, the ayatollahs could have a nuclear weapon within a couple of years.

The moral of this tale of spectacular derring-do is simple. You likely read it here before:  “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”