Jewish communities across the globe are also taking precautions, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.

 

Israel has placed its embassies around the world on a heightened security alert in the wake of the assassination on Friday of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, near Tehran.

Jewish communities across the globe are also taking precautions, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.

Iran has blamed Israel for the killing and vowed to avenge Fakhrizadeh’s death. Both Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to respond to the slaying, with Rouhani directly blaming Israel for the assassination.

Rouhani said that Fakhrizadeh’s death would not stop its nuclear program, something Khamenei said as well.

The killing threatens to renew tensions between the US and Iran in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s term, just as President-elect Joe Biden has suggested his administration could return to Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers from which Trump earlier withdrew. The Pentagon announced early Saturday that it sent the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier back into the Mideast.

In a statement, Khamenei called Fakhrizadeh “the country’s prominent and distinguished nuclear and defensive scientist.”

He said Iran’s first priority after the killing was the “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it.”

Rouhani said Iran would “respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time.” He added: “The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos.”