Top Iranian Nuclear Scientist Killed In Attack

NPR 

November 27, 202011:25 AM ET

MATTHEW S. SCHWARTZ

This photo released by the semiofficial Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was reportedly killed in Absard, a small city just east of Tehran, Iran, on Friday. Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist that Israel alleged led the Islamic Republic's military nuclear program until its disbanding in the early 2000s, was "assassinated" Friday, state TV said.

Fars News Agency via AP

Updated at 6:54 a.m. ET Saturday

A top Iranian scientist believed to be responsible for developing the country's military nuclear program was killed Friday, causing outrage in Iran and raising U.S. concerns over potential retaliation.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was in a vehicle that came under attack from "armed terrorists," Iran's Defense Ministry said in a statement. "In the shootout between Fakhrizadeh's bodyguards and the terrorists, the scientist was seriously wounded and taken to hospital," where the medical team was unable to save him and he succumbed to his injuries, it said.

State media said the vehicle was traveling outside the capital, Tehran, when it came under attack.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but some senior Iranian officials said they believe Israel played a role.

"Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter. "This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators."

The Israeli government declined to comment on Fakhrizadeh's killing.

In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned the scientist when discussing Iran's nuclear program.

"Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh," he said, while announcing that the Israeli spy agency Mossad had stolen documents from Iran about its covert nuclear activities.

In remarks Friday following news of the killing, Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami said Fakhrizadeh had a track record of scientific and defense innovations, and led a team that developed one of the country's first kits for coronavirus diagnosis. Fakhrizadeh, a professor of physics at Imam Hussein University in Tehran, was the former head of Iran's Physics Research Center.

It's not the first time Fakhrizadeh faced an attempt on his life. Israeli intelligence affairs journalist Yossi Melman reported that the Iranian scientist escaped an attempted assassination a few years ago.

In addition to Fakhrizadeh's work as a physics professor, "he also led the clandestine Amad plan checking the feasibility of a nuclear bomb" and "led its weaponization efforts," Melman wrote in a tweet retweeted by President Trump. "He was head of Iran's secret military program and wanted for many years by Mossad."

The U.S. Departments of State and Treasury started sanctioning Fakhrizadeh in 2008, blocking him from interacting with the U.S. financial system. The U.S. has publicly stated that Fakhrizadeh was the leader of Iran's nuclear research program.

The U.S. State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the incident.

But a senior U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said the killing has raised concerns of blowback from Iran against U.S. forces in the region, especially in Iraq, where U.S. forces already have faced attacks from Iranian-backed militias.

When President Trump this month raised the possibility of attacking Iran to disable its nuclear program, U.S. military and other senior officials pushed back, warning of potential retaliation against U.S. troops in the region.

Still, Israeli Defense Forces allegedly were instructed in recent weeks to prepare for the possibility that the U.S. would strike Iran before Trump leaves office, Axios reported Wednesday. This belief wasn't based on specific intelligence, but was due to the anticipation of a "very sensitive period" while Trump is still commander in chief, Axios said, citing senior Israeli officials.

Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, said in a series of tweets that Israel is a "prime suspect" in the attack because it has the expertise and motivation to do.

"Conducting attacks in Iran has few down-sides for Israel right now," said Parsi, who has written extensively on the relationship between Iran, Israel and the U.S. "Either Iran lashes out and sparks a broader conflict that sucks in the US, bringing about a US-Iran confrontation that Netanyahu long has sought."

In a letter Friday to the secretary general of the United Nations and the president of the Security Council, Iran's ambassador to the U.N., Majid Takht Ravanchi, made clear he shares those suspicions.

"The cowardly assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh — with serious indications of Israeli responsibility in it — is another desperate attempt to wreak havoc on our region as well as to disrupt Iran's scientific and technological development," the ambassador said in the letter, noting that Iranian officials were "warning against any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel."

"The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the criminal assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh," the letter added, "and expects the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Security Council to strongly condemn this inhumane terrorist act and take necessary measures against its perpetrators."

NATIONAL SECURITY

Trump Shakes Up The Military, But To What End?

The assassination is likely to complicate any Biden administration attempt to revive diplomacy with Iran, Parsi said. Iranian officials have already promised retaliation.

"In the last days of their gambling ally's political life, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full-blown war," said Hossein Dehghan, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, according to The Associated Press. "We will descend like lightning on the killers of this oppressed martyr and we will make them regret their actions!"

Previous cyberattacks by the U.S. and Israel, and assassinations of scientists haven't stopped Iran's nuclear program. This attack won't either, said Ariane Tabatabai of the German Marshall Fund.

"A single man was not running the entirety of Iran's nuclear program," Tabatabai told All Things Considered. "This has become a much larger endeavor. And yes, he was an important player. But one of the more important parts of his role was to develop that infrastructure, to train others, to be able to continue the program. ... I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a bit more of the push within the system to go in the direction of a nuclear weapon."

NPR's Peter Kenyon, Daniel Estrin, Tom Bowman, Michele Kelemen, Colin Dwyer and James Doubek contributed to this report.

Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program

The president was dissuaded from moving ahead with a strike by advisers who warned that it could escalate into a broader conflict in his last weeks in office.

NY TIMES

President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday.

A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Wednesday that Iran’s uranium stockpile was now 12 times larger than permitted under the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump abandoned in 2018. The agency also noted that Iran had not allowed it access to another suspected site where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.

Mr. Trump asked his top national security aides what options were available and how to respond, officials said.

After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

Mr. Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The episode underscored how Mr. Trump still faces an array of global threats in his final weeks in office. A strike on Iran may not play well to his base, which is largely opposed to a deeper American conflict in the Middle East, but it could poison relations with Tehran so that it would be much harder for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, as he has promised to do.

Since Mr. Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other top Pentagon aides last week, Defense Department and other national security officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, whether overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries at the end of his term.

WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202

One of the threats Biden will inherit is a nuclear North Korea.

Last month, Kim Jong Un rolled out a massive new road-mobile ICBM during a parade in Pyongyang. This is a larger version of the nuclear-capable North Korean missiles that can already reach the United States. Fortunately, we are making some progress in being able to defend against such threats. “The U.S. military has shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile in a test that demonstrated for the first time that the United States can intercept ICBMs from a warship at sea,” Paul Sonne reports. “The Missile Defense Agency announced the success of the test Tuesday, saying the USS John Finn had struck and destroyed a ‘threat representative’ ICBM using a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii. …

 

Trump purges a top DHS official who led the agency's efforts to secure the election.

“In a tweet, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at DHS and led successful efforts to help state and local election offices protect their systems and to rebut misinformation,” Ellen Nakashima and Nick Miroff report. “Earlier Tuesday, Krebs in a tweet refuted allegations that election systems were manipulated, saying that ‘59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’’ Krebs’s statement amounted to a debunking of Trump’s central claim that the November election was stolen. [Trump] said on Twitter: ‘The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud … Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated.' … Following Trump’s tweet, acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf called Krebs’s deputy, Matthew Travis, to inform him that the White House had overruled CISA’s succession plan that named him acting director, essentially forcing him to resign, Travis said. … 

"Krebs’s dismissal was not unexpected, as he told associates last week that he was expecting to be fired. His latest tweet about the security of the election, which followed similar earlier assessments by his agency, including on its Rumor Control Web page, angered the president … Krebs’s agency has asserted its independence in recent days … After his firing, Krebs responded from his personal Twitter account: 'Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow. #Protect2020.'

"The news disturbed many current and former officials and cybersecurity professionals who said that under Krebs, DHS significantly boosted the agency’s capabilities to help the private sector, as well as those managing election infrastructure, better defending themselves against foreign and domestic threats. …

"The Trump campaign has faced a string of failures in its beleaguered effort to overturn the result of the election through the courts. In the latest defeat on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the campaign’s claim that GOP observers did not have sufficient access to the vote count, underscoring how the president’s claims of voting irregularities have repeatedly run aground before judges. Meanwhile, in Nevada, the campaign filed a challenge to the state’s election results, asking a state court in Carson City to declare Trump the winner of Nevada’s six presidential electors or to annul the election entirely … 

"Even as the president’s allies frantically raced to roll out more allegations around the country, multiple people close to the campaign acknowledged there was little evidence to support the assertions and bemoaned the ascension of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has sidelined other legal advisers. Giuliani, who speaks with Trump several times a day, has convinced him his odds are better than other campaign officials believe … There is a grim sense ‘that this is going to end quickly and badly,’ one official said. During an appearance in federal court in Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, Giuliani made broad unsubstantiated allegations about ‘widespread nationwide voter fraud,’ yet conceded that Trump’s team was not alleging fraud as a matter of law. … Two campaign officials said Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, attorney Justin Clark and others were barely involved anymore in the legal fight, with it all being ‘Rudy all the time,’ in the words of one.

“Over the weekend, Giuliani and his own team of lawyers, which also includes Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis, attempted what was described [by insiders] as an internal campaign ‘coup,'" ABC News reports. "Giuliani’s team has taken over office space in the Trump campaign’s Arlington, Virginia, headquarters … Ellis told the remaining campaign staff that they should only follow orders from people named ‘Rudy or Jenna’ … The attempted power grab hit a boiling point on Saturday when [Jason] Miller, who’s been the campaign's chief strategist for months, and Ellis got into what sources said was a ‘screaming match’ in front of other staffers.”

Pfizer completes its vaccine trial.

“The coronavirus vaccine being developed by Pfizer and German biotechnology firm BioNTech is 95 percent effective at preventing disease, according to an analysis after the trial reached its endpoint. The vaccine trial also reached a safety milestone, with two months of follow-up on half of the participants, and Pfizer will submit an application for emergency authorization ‘within days,’” Carolyn Johnson reports. “In the trial, half the nearly 44,000 participants received the experimental vaccine and half received a placebo. As those people went about their normal lives, they were exposed to the virus in the community, and physicians tracked all cases with symptoms to see if the vaccine had a protective effect. The data have not yet been published or peer reviewed, but will be closely scrutinized by the FDA and an independent advisory committee that makes recommendations to the agency. … Among people older than 65, a group at high risk of severe illness, the vaccine was 94 percent effective. … U.S. government officials anticipate having 40 million doses of both vaccines by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 20 million people.” 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), 87, tests positive.

“Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate, which makes him the third in line of succession to the presidency, revealed Tuesday that he has contracted the coronavirus,” Colby Itkowitz and Mike DeBonis report. “‘I’m feeling good + will keep up on my work for the ppl of Iowa from home.

NYS Exceeds 1,000 Coronavirus Deaths as NYC Says it has Only a Weeks Worth of Med Supplies. UPDATES.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday offered a grim assessment of the coronavirus pandemic engulfing the state, as he reported that 237 people had died since the day before,  the largest one-day increase since the coronavirus outbreak began.The number of coronavirus deaths in New York City increased by 161 from Saturday night to Sunday morning, pushing the statewide total to over 1,000 fatalities, according to the latest figures from the city and state, and county-level data compiled by The New York Times.
New York City has a one-week supply of medical supplies to care for any New Yorker who is sick, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday.


“We have enough supplies to get to a week from today, with the exception of ventilators, we’re going to need at least several hundred more ventilators very quickly,” Mr. de Blasio said in an appearance Sunday morning on CNN. “We are going to need a reinforcement.’’

And the projections, he added, suggests that the crisis facing New York could grow even worse.

“I don’t think there’s any way to look at those numbers,” Mr. Cuomo said, “without seeing thousands of people pass away.”

The total number of deaths in the state stood at 965 on Sunday morning, before New York City reported its most recent count. The number of NYC cases jumped to nearly 33,500, from about 30,000 the day before.

The number of NYS confirmed cases jumped by 7,200 in one day, putting the total of confirmed cases at 59,513 cases as of Sunday. More than half of the cases, or 33,768, are in New York City, according to the latest figures from the city and state.

About 8,500 people are currently hospitalized, an increase of 16 percent from Saturday  to Sunday. Of those, 2,037 are in intensive care units, which are equipped with ventilators.

“People asked ‘when is this over?,’” Mr. Cuomo said. “When they come up with an inexpensive home test or point of care test that can be brought to volume.”

The governor extended his order for all nonessential workers to stay home until April 15.

Mr. Cuomo said he would ask Mayor Bill de Blasio to devise a plan for the city’s 11 public hospitals to coordinate how patients and resources are distributed. He also wants public and private hospitals to work together throughout the state. “There is an artificial wall between those two systems right now. That wall has to come down,” Mr. Cuomo said.

More than 76,000 health care workers, many of them retirees, have volunteered to work in hospitals should the facilities become strained.

The city will add more emergency personnel, more ambulances and more shifts in response to the record number of calls to 911, Mr. de Blastio said.
“This is unprecedented,’’ he said. “We’ve never seen our E.M.S. system get this many calls, ever.”
Mr. de Blasio said the city has also sent 169 additional health care workers to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, which is reeling from the number of patients it is treating.

“This is going to an extraordinarily tough next few weeks, but we will keep sending more and more reinforcements,” Mr. de Blasio said.

The Mayor emphasized that playgrounds in New York City would stay open, but that the police would step up its enforcement of social distancing rules.

“If someone is told by an officer, disperse, keep moving, you’re not distanced, and they don’t follow the direct instruction of the officer,’’ he said, “I’m comfortable at this point that they will be fined.”

Mr. Cuomo said he supported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s travel advisory for New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, urging residents to refrain from nonessential domestic travel for 14 days. “It’s nothing we haven’t been doing,” Mr. Cuomo said.

Some good news: The Westchester County man who was New York’s second confirmed case, bringing attention to a cluster of cases in New Rochelle, has been discharged from the hospital, Mr. Cuomo said.

“Our front line health care workers,” Mr. de Blasio said, “are giving their all, they’re in harm’s way. And, you know, we need to get them relief. We need to get them support and protection, but also relief. They can’t keep up at this pace.’’

The White House official said on Sunday that an aircraft carrying gloves, masks, gowns and other medical supplies from Shanghai arrived on Sunday morning at Kennedy International Airport in New York, the first in a series of roughly 20 flights that officials say will funnel much-needed goods to the United States by early April.

The plane carried 130,000 N-95 masks, nearly 1.8 million surgical masks and gowns, more than 10 million gloves and more than 70,000 thermometers.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide the majority of the supplies to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with the rest going to nursing homes in the region and other high-risk areas across the country, a White House spokesman said.

Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the impact the shipment would have on the availability of medical supplies in the city and state.

Trump says keeping US Covid-19 deaths to 100,000 would be a ‘very good job’

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, the US president claimed that, if his administration keeps the death toll to 100,000, it will have done “a very good job” – a startling shift from his optimistic predictions of a few days ago when he said he hoped to restart the economy by Easter.
Trump also undermined his plea for unity by uttering falsehoods, verbally abusing reporters and making incendiary allegations that implied health care workers were stealing masks, without providing evidence.
The extended deadline marked a humiliating retreat for the president who, having squandered six precious weeks at the start of the pandemic, more recently complained that the cure is worse than the problem and floated Easter Sunday as a “beautiful timeline” for reopening big swathes of the country.

A field hospital is growing in Central Park.

It was a jarring scene — a giant field hospital rising in the middle of one of New York City’s most iconic spots.
But the coronavirus virus has upended life in New York City in many ways. Now Central Park has been chosen as a location for one of several temporary hospitals being erected to help hospitals inundated with coronavirus patients.The field hospital in the park, which is being set up by the Mt. Sinai hospital system, will have 68 beds and is expected to be operational by Tuesday,


For the first time New York State lawmakers choose to vote remotely.
Facing a looming deadline to pass a budget by April 1, lawmakers began to convene in the Albany on Sunday, with the Assembly also expected to pass measures to limit the number of people in the chamber.

As coronavirus cases explode in Iran, U.S. sanctions hinder its access to drugs and medical equipment.

Sweeping U.S. sanctions are hampering Iranian efforts to import medicine and other medical supplies to confront one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world, health workers and sanctions experts say.

The broad U.S. restrictions on Iran’s banking system and the embargo on its oil exports have limited Tehran’s ability to finance and purchase essential items from abroad, including drugs as well as the raw materials and equipment needed to manufacture medicines domestically.

The Trump administration has also reduced the number of licenses it grants to companies for certain medical exports to Iran, according to quarterly reports from a U.S. Treasury Department enforcement agency. The list of items requiring special authorization includes oxygen generators, full-face respirator masks and thermal imaging equipment, all of which are needed to treat patients and keep medical workers safe, doctors say.

The tough measures are part of a U.S. “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran, adopted by the Trump administration after it unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal Iran had signed with world powers.

Iranian medical workers and global public health experts say it is not possible to determine exactly how much U.S. sanctions have affected Iran’s capacity to fight a virus that by official counts has infected more than 35,000 Iranians and killed at least 2,500 — some estimates put the toll far higher — while spawning outbreaks in other countries. But they say it is clear that the Iranian health-care system is being deprived of equipment necessary to save lives and prevent wider infection.

“There are a lot of shortages now. . . . [Hospitals] do not have enough diagnostic kits or good quality scanners, and there is also a shortage of masks,” said Nouradin Pirmoazen, a thoracic surgeon and former lawmaker in Iran.

Trump touts TV ratings of his news conferences amid pandemic.

President Trump took to Twitter Sunday afternoon to tout the ratings of his news conferences, claiming without evidence that mainstream media are going “CRAZY” because of his popularity on television.

“Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY,” Trump tweeted. “‘Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.’ said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!”

The president seemed to be referring to a New York Times article that noted the now-daily news briefings provided by Trump and the coronavirus task force have drawn an average audience of 8.5 million people on cable news, with viewership last Monday reaching nearly 12.2 million. Those numbers are roughly on par with audiences for “The Bachelor” season finale and “Monday Night Football,” respectively, according to the Times.

Some experts and media figures have warned against airing the briefings because of Trump’s frequent statements playing down the severity of the pandemic or giving viewers incorrect information.

Singer John Prine Hospitalized, in Critical Condition Following Coronavirus Symptoms

Americana legend John Prine has been hospitalized since Thursday after experiencing a sudden onset of COVID-19 symptoms.

A cancer survivor, the singer-songwriter’s team revealed the news Sunday afternoon with a post on social media, explaining that his “situation is critical.”

"After a sudden onset of COVID-19 symptoms, John was hospitalized on Thursday (3/26)," the post says. "He was intubated Saturday evening, and continues to receive care, but his situation is critical.
"This is hard news for us to share," the message continues. "But so many of you have loved and supported John over the years, we wanted to let you know and give you the chance to send on more of that love and support now. And know that we love you, and John loves you."

Iranian missile likely caused Ukraine plane crash, Pompeo says; Ukraine gets access to black box

Kim HjelmgaardGrace Hauck

USA TODAY

0:30

0:48

The Trump administration suspects an Iranian missile caused the deadly crash of a Ukrainian passenger jet, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference Friday, confirming earlier intelligence reports.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has gained access to the "black box" from the plane, which records data from the flight and voices from the cockpit. In a WhatsApp message sent to USA TODAY, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's president, Iulia Mendel, wrote: "Yes, Ukraine has access to the black boxes."

Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that the black box would be opened Friday, although it said the process of downloading the information could take up to two months.

If Iran is found to have shot down the plane once the investigation is complete, the U.S. "and the world will take appropriate actions in response," Pompeo said.

"We do believe that it is likely that that plane was shot down by an Iranian missile. We’re going to let that investigation play out," Pompeo said.

The treasury department will issue waivers for anyone who can help facilitate the investigation, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said. He also announced an array of new sanctions on Iran, including sanctions on eight senior administration officials.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Friday that he has "no reason not to believe reports" that the plane "may have been downed" by an Iranian missile.

Persian Gulf:Iran got its revenge for Soleimani's killing but the US Navy is still a target

Iran on Friday urged American and Canadian investigators to share any information they have on the crash while again rejecting any suggestion it was brought down by one of its own missiles. 

"What is obvious for us, and what we can say with certainty, is that no missile hit the plane," Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s national aviation department, told a press conference in Tehran. "If they are really sure, they should come and show their findings to the world" in accordance with international standards, he added.

Abedzadeh's comments came as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko tweeted that he and President Volodymyr Zelensky met with U.S. Embassy officials and obtained "important data" about the crash. Prystaiko didn't specify what kind of data it was. 

One of Iran's most senior diplomats in Europe meanwhile disputed a suggestion from a journalist that the Ukraine International Airlines crash site outside Tehran had "no security," "was not cordoned off" and that there was "no sign of any investigators."

Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's ambassador to the United Kingdom, told USA TODAY after a briefing with reporters here that it wasn't true, as CBS News' senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer tweeted that the crash site was not being protected for investigators and that local "scavengers (were) now picking the site clean."

The allegation is a worrying one in light of the fact U.S intelligence officials believe Iran may have mistakenly shot down the commercial airliner with a missile, which killed all 176 people on board: 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedish, four Afghan, three German and three British nationals.

Iran vehemently disputes shooting the plane down and said its initial findings indicated the plane crashed as a result of a technical fault. Palmer, who is in Iran, was able to briefly visit the crash site Friday before being chased away by Iranian officials. 

Ukraine's plane crashed just hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. military based in Iraq. That assault came in retaliation for the Pentagon's killing in a drone strike of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran's most senior and revered military commanders. 

The Trump administration said Soleimani was planning an "imminent" attack against U.S. citizens, but Pompeo on Friday faced several questions about the details of that alleged plot.

"This was gonna happen. And American lives were at risk, and we would have been culpably negligent ... had we not recommended to the president that he take this action against Qasem Soleimani," Pompeo said.

Video has emerged online that appears to show a plane near Tehran being hit with a projectile of some kind, but no conclusive evidence has been released. 

Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran and a senior policy adviser to Pompeo, said Iran should not do anything to impede the investigation into the crash.

"This needs to be open, transparent and comprehensive," he told reporters during a conference call on Friday.

Baeidinejad said in the briefing that Iran was "fully committed to participating in an international investigation that meets the highest international standards." He also cautioned that the issue "should avoid being politicized" because it was harmful to the friends and family members of those who died in the crash near Tehran's airport. 

Ukrainian plane:Crash may be grim echo of US downing of Iran flight in 1988

Trump and Iran:House votes to limit Trump's war powers following Soleimani killing

Tehran and Washington are deeply suspicious of one another after decades of animosity and tensions have increased since the Trump administration pulled out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and reimposed economic sanctions. 

Baeidinejad appeared to indicate in the briefing in London that American officials from the National Transportation Safety Bureau, a U.S. government agency, would travel to Iran to participate in the crash investigation. However, there has been no independent confirmation from the NTSB, the U.S. State Department or the White House that such a move would take place. 

Late Thursday, NTSB published a statement saying it had received "formal notification" about the crash from Iran's Civil Aviation Organization and would be sending "an accredited representative to the investigation of the crash."

The NTSB followed that up Friday, saying the "designation of an accredited representative is the first step toward that end. No decision has been made about travel and decisions are still being made about how the NTSB’s involvement may unfold."

There has been no indication that this representative would be an American government employee. It would be a major step forward for U.S-Iran government-to-government contact if a U.S. official traveled to Iran. There are very few, if any, known instances of American government employees traveling to Iran since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution that coincided with protesters in Tehran storming the U.S. Embassy there and holding 52 American diplomats and officials hostage for 444 days. 

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY

Iran admits to downing airliner amid Ukraine’s calls for justice

Iranian officials said that military personnel targeted the Ukraine jet as it turned toward a “sensitive military site” shortly after departing from Tehran.

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Trump says 4 embassies were under threat from Iran, a claim contested by U.S. officials

A senior administration official and a senior defense official said they were only aware of vague intelligence about a plot against the embassy in Baghdad. Neither said there were threats against multiple embassies.

• By Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim

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Senior members of the administration including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper declined to confirm the president’s assertion that four U.S. embassies had been targeted for attack by Iran.

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• Strike against general reflects an aggressive national security team not inclined to curb Trump