Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Iran says it won’t fall into trap
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran vowed it won’t “fall into the trap” of hindering any future talks with the incoming government of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden after the assassination of a top nuclear scientist.
“Iran’s scientific and defense policies won’t change because of the assassination of one scientist or general,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei said in a statement Sunday posted on the government’s official website. The Islamic Republic “shouldn’t fall into the trap of linking the assassination to past nuclear negotiations,” he said.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a veteran physicist who played a major role in Iran’s nuclear research and defense activities, was killed in a bombing and shooting ambush outside Tehran on Friday. Iran has blamed Israel, which had accused Fakhrizadeh of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb project and hasn’t commented on the allegation.
Underscoring the support for diplomacy, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said while “Iran and the U.S. will continue to have fundamental differences,” the tension between Tehran and Washington needn’t continue after President Donald Trump is out of office.
“Under Trump’s presidency, Iran and U.S. tensions rose to a 40-year peak. It seems unnecessary for this situation to continue,” Zarif told the Entekhab news website in an interview Sunday.
Both Israel and Trump oppose Biden’s intention to rejoin the nuclear accord reached in the Obama administration if Tehran — which denies bomb-making ambitions — also returns to full compliance.
Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018 and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, considered attacking the country during his last few weeks in office but was dissuaded by senior aides, the New York Times reported. The killing of Fakhrizadeh, who will be buried in Tehran today, could also complicate a return to the accord.
“This assassination will not remain unanswered, but our response won’t come at a time, place or shape they expect,” Rabiei said, referring to Israel and the U.S. “Iran sets the time and the place.”
Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Adm. Mike Mullen, said the assassination will make it more difficult for Biden to reenter the nuclear agreement with Iran.
“Fakhrizadeh was at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program,” he said. “Not only the brains but also the passion behind it, so his assassination is really a significant event.”
Mullen added he was hopeful that Biden “can actually reach in and calm the waters, but I think this heightens tension significantly.”
Friday’s attack tops a year of crisis and instability that started with Trump ordering the killing of a top Iranian general in a Jan. 3 drone strike in Baghdad. Iran retaliated with a missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq that didn’t result in any fatalities. But its unintentional downing of a passenger plane above Tehran in the aftermath killed 176 people.
Hard-liners inside Iran are angry at President Hassan Rouhani for trying to keep the 2015 deal alive while attacks continue on Iran. The ultra-hardline Kayhan newspaper, whose editor is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published an opinion piece on Sunday calling for the northern Israeli city of Haifa to be attacked in retaliation.
Though the hard-line Kayhan newspaper has long argued for aggressive retaliation for operations targeting Iran, Sunday’s opinion piece went further, suggesting any assault be carried out in a way that destroys facilities and “also causes heavy human casualties.”
Kayhan published the piece written by Iranian analyst Sadollah Zarei, who argued Iran’s previous responses to suspected Israeli airstrikes that killed Revolutionary Guard forces in Syria did not go far enough to deter Israel. He said an assault on Haifa also needed to be greater than Iran’s ballistic missile attack against American troops in Iraq after the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed the Iranian general.
Striking the Israeli city of Haifa and killing a large number of people “will definitely lead to deterrence, because the United States and the Israeli regime and its agents are by no means ready to take part in a war and a military confrontation,” Zarei wrote.
Such a strike likely would draw an immediate Israeli retaliation and spark a wider conflict across the Mideast.