Iran calls on the international community to condemn and take action for the assassination of Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, said the Persian country’s representative to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi, in a letter, addressed to the UN.

Tehran “expects the UN Secretary-General (António Guterres) and the Security Council to firmly condemn this inhumane terrorist act and take necessary action against its perpetrators,” the diplomat wrote.

Takht Ravanchi reiterated that there are indications of Israel’s responsibility for the assassination.

“It’s a new attempt to wreak havoc in our region and undermine Iran’s scientific and technical development,” he said.

Iran will do everything possible to defend its citizens, Majid Takht Ravanchi declared.

“Warning against any U.S. and Israeli affairs against my country, especially during the remaining period of exercise of the current U.S. administration, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to take all necessary measures to defend its people and guarantee their interests,” the diplomat said in a letter to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, and the Security Council.

Takht Ravanchi stressed that the murdered scientist played an important role in the development of COVID-19 tests and also coordinated the development of the anti-coronavirus vaccine.

Iran’s Defense Ministry reported that prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh died in hospital from injuries sustained in an attack by a group of armed men.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif said there are “serious indications of Israel’s role” in the assassination of the scientist, also head of the Innovation Research Organization of the Iranian Defense Ministry.

For his part, the advisor to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Hossein Dehghan, assured that Tehran will respond to this crime.

Fakhrizadeh, called in diplomatic circles “the father of the Iranian bomb“, was singled out by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 as the director of the Persian country’s nuclear weapons project.

Israel is suspected of having killed several Iranian scientists over the years in an attempt to prevent the development of Tehran’s nuclear program.