Following the assassination on Friday on the outskirts of Tehran of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, numerous articles appeared in Saudi media justifying the killing and presenting it as beneficial to the world. Some even went so far as to attack those who have condemned it.

The articles underlined that Fakhrizadeh was no ordinary civilian scientist whose work contributed to mankind, but rather the head of Iran’s malicious nuclear program, which threatens the region and world. Anything that thwarts the Iranian regime’s goal of acquiring nuclear weapons, including the assassination of senior Iranian officials, is a service to mankind, the authors argue.

Some of the articles expressed wonder that anyone could denounce the assassination of a man who had served a criminal regime and worked to build a nuclear bomb with the aim of perpetrating a heinous crime.

It is noteworthy that officially, Saudi Arabia has refrained from condemning the assassination, even though several of its regional allies, among them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan, did so several days after the fact.