Several Iranian news organizations reported that the assassin was a killer robot, and that the entire operation was conducted by remote control. These reports directly contradicted the supposedly eyewitness accounts of a gun battle between teams of assassins and bodyguards and reports that some of the assassins had been arrested or killed.
Iranians mocked the story as a transparent effort to minimize the embarrassment of the elite security force that failed to protect one of the country's most closely guarded figures.
Thomas Withington, an electronic warfare analyst, told the BBC that the killer robot theory should be taken with "a healthy pinch of salt," and that Iran's description appeared to be little more than a collection of "cool buzzwords."
Except this time there really was a killer robot.