Iran says that its third homegrown vaccine has reached the phase of clinical trials, even as details about its production remained slim. AdBut details are scant about the Islamic Republic's vaccine production efforts. Two other Iranian vaccines are also in the phase of clinical trials, with the most advanced, called Barekat, tested on 300 people so far. Earlier this week, the government launched a vaccine production factory it claims can make 3 million doses a day. Iran formally launched its limited vaccination campaign last month, doling out Russia's Sputnik V vaccine to health workers and those with chronic health conditions.

(Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)TEHRAN – A top Iranian security official on Monday accused Israel of using “electronic devices” to remotely kill a scientist who founded the Islamic Republic's military nuclear program in the 2000s. Israel insists Iran still maintains the ambition of developing nuclear weapons, pointing to Tehran’s ballistic missile program and research into other technologies. Iran long has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Shahin Gobadi, an MEK spokesman, dismissed Shamkhani's remarks as “rage, rancor and lies” sparked by the group's earlier exposes over Iran's nuclear program. Though long suspicious of Iran’s nuclear program, the Emirates has said it wants to de-escalate the crisis.

An opinion piece published by a hard-line Iranian newspaper has suggested that Iran must attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if Israel carried out the killing of a scientist. U.S. intelligence agencies and U.N. nuclear inspectors have said the organized military nuclear program that Fakhrizadeh oversaw disbanded in 2003. Israel insists Iran still maintains the ambition of developing nuclear weapons. The nuclear watchdog has provided an unprecedented, real-time look at Iran’s civilian nuclear program following the country's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful.

Israel, long suspected of killing Iranian scientists a decade ago amid earlier tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, has yet to comment on Fakhrizadeh's killing Friday. Iran’s civilian atomic program has continued its experiments and now enriches a growing uranium stockpile up to 4.5% purity in response to the collapse of Iran's nuclear deal after the U.S.' 2018 withdrawal from the accord. Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful. Iran also could throw out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who have provided an unprecedented, real-time look at Iran's nuclear program since the deal. Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh.

DUBAI – An Iranian scientist named by the West as the leader of the Islamic Republic's disbanded military nuclear program was killed Friday in an ambush on the outskirts of Tehran, authorities said. Israel, long suspected of killing several Iranian nuclear scientists a decade ago, declined to immediately comment. The agency said, however, that those calculations were “incomplete and fragmented.”IAEA inspectors now monitor Iranian nuclear sites as part of the now-unraveling nuclear deal with world powers. In 2018, Netanyahu gave a presentation in which he unveiled what he described as material stolen by Israel from an Iranian nuclear archive. Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”___Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Mohammad Nasiri in Tehran, Iran, and Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.