The Iranian Defense Ministry announced on Sunday that it has "discovered a lead on the identity of the perpetrators" behind the killing of a top nuclear scientist and that "further information on the crime will be published soon."
It was also reported that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by a remote control automatic machine gun and not, as initial reports suggested, by a squad of assassins, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported.
According to Fars, Fakhrizadeh and his wife were on their way to a vacation in their home in the outskirts of Tehran, the findings of an Iranian investigation has shown.
The two drove in a convoy of four vehicles in total, three belonging to security personnel. At one point, the vehicle that led the convoy drove ahead in order to conduct a routine check-up of Fakhrizadeh’s home.
This was when bullets flew toward Fakhrizadeh's car, prompting him to brake. The scientist got out of the vehicle after assuming he hit an object on the road or that there was some problem with the engine.
When he was out in the open, an unmanned Nissan vehicle - which stood some 500 feet away - opened fire at the scientist.
The investigation concluded that a remotely controlled machine gun was installed in the Nissan vehicle, and that Fakhrizadeh was hit by three bullets, one hitting him in the spine.
Several seconds after the hit, the firing vehicle exploded to not leave any evidence behind, according to the report. The whole operation took three minutes and did not involve any assassins, Fars reported.
The investigators further found that the owner of the Nissan vehicle left Iran on October 29.