Iranian Nuclear Scientist Killed In Attack Outside Tehran

A PROMINENT Iranian nuclear scientist who was seen as a driving force behind Tehran’s disbanded effort to build a nuclear weapon nearly two decades ago was killed Friday outside Tehran in an apparent targeted ambush, Iranian officials said.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, described the attack on the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as the work of “state terror” and implicated Israel as having a possible role. Officials in Israel had no comment.

The killing of Fakhrizadeh — on a road in Damavand east of Tehran — was the third high-profile attack to shake Tehran’s leadership in less than a year.

In January, a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander and head of its special-operations forces abroad. And in August, Israeli agents acting on behalf of American officials assassinated a senior al-Qaeda official in Tehran, according to a U.S. official.

Fakhrizadeh was