HOW THEY DID IT

Iranian Scientist’s Assassin Really Was a Killer Robot

The New York Times has reconstructed the remote-control machine-gun hit on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last year.

When Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in November 2020, seemingly wild claims that it was carried out by a killer robot emerged. Almost a year later, The New York Times reports that’s exactly what happened: a remote-controlled machine gun planted in a pickup truck and operated by a Mossad sniper took out Fakhrizadeh. The newspaper says the weapon was the beta test of a weapon “kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute.” The truck was filled with explosives meant to blow up and destroy the robotic gun, but instead the force of the blast flung out the equipment intact, leaving behind evidence of the new weapon, the Times said.