Assassination in Iran: danger ahead?
The assassination last Friday of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was “tantamount to a declaration of war”, said The Observer.
Iran’s top nuclear scientist was travelling near the town of Absard, about 50 miles east of Tehran, when his convoy came under attack. Early reports said he died in a hail of bullets during an assault by up to 12 gunmen, though Iranian media later stated that he had actually been killed by a “remotecontrolled machine gun”, and that no one else was at the scene. Either way, the killing of the 59-year-old regarded as the “father” of Iran’s nuclear programme now risks goading Tehran into violent retaliation. Although no one has claimed responsibility, the finger of suspicion points at its chief enemies: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US.
“Iran was swift to blame Israel,” said Holly Dagres in The Daily Telegraph. Indeed, eliminating targets in their cars is a “hallmark” of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, which killed four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012. But the timing of this attack also “raises questions about US involvement”: it comes just weeks after President Trump reportedly sought advice on the feasibility of air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Trump ordered the drone attack in January that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most important general, in response to a series of missile attacks on US bases in Iraq. He has also “worked hard” to build an “anti-Iran alliance” with Saudi Arabia and Israel. This latest assassination could be “an attempt to sabotage any future diplomacy between the US and Iran” – since Joe Biden has proposed reviving the Barack Obama-led 2015 deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Ironically, Fakhrizadeh’s death might actually make a new deal with Iran more likely, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. History shows that neither killing Iran’s scientists nor imposing crippling sanctions has prevented it developing nuclear weapons. Only diplomacy has stopped its nuclear programme dead. (And since Trump “foolishly” pulled out of Obama’s deal in 2018, Iran has increased its uranium stockpile eightfold.) However, there is evidence that the earlier assassination campaign did put pressure on Tehran to negotiate, because it was such a shock to its nuclear experts. Likewise, Fakhrizadeh’s killing may in fact push Iran to the table. Perhaps, said David Gardner in the FT. But it seems more likely to embolden Tehran’s hardliners to launch attacks via its hit squads and proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. With luck, there won’t be a real war. “But there will be a reckoning.”