The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month was carried out remotely with artificial intelligence and a machine gun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system”, Tasnim news agency quoted a senior commander as saying.

Iran has blamed Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen by western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian programme to develop nuclear weapons capability. Tehran has long denied any such ambition.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the killing, and one of its officials suggested that the Tasnim report of the tactics used was a face-saving gambit by Iran. In the past, however, Israel has acknowledged pursuing covert, intelligence-gathering operations against the nuclear programme of its arch-enemy.

The Islamic Republic has given contradictory details of Fakhrizadeh's death in a daytime November 27 ambush on his car on a highway near Tehran.

“No terrorists were present on the ground... Martyr Fakhrizadeh was driving when a weapon, using an advanced camera, zoomed in on him,” Tasnim, a semi-official agency, quoted Ali Fadavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, as saying in a ceremony on Sunday.

“The machine gun was placed on a pick-up truck and was controlled by a satellite.” Fadavi spoke after authorities said they had found “clues about the assassins”.