Friday’s assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh led to predictable concern from those who prepared the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015. Former CIA head John Brenner was furious, “This was a criminal act and highly reckless,” he tweeted. “Such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law and encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.”
Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications was indignant, “This is an outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy between an incoming US administration and Iran,” he tweeted. “It’s time for this ceaseless escalation to stop.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami of the left-wing J Street lobbying group was furious. “The assassination of a senior Iranian nuclear scientist appears to be an attempt to sabotage the ability of the incoming Biden administration to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as well as the chances of further diplomacy, either by limiting the political leeway of Iranian officials who want to restore the deal, or by triggering an escalation leading to military confrontation,” he said.
Each of these reactions pushed the same theme: whoever carried this out – and all fingers are pointed at Israel – intended to limit President-elect Joe Biden’s space for maneuvering and sabotage any possible diplomacy with Iran.
The unstated subtext of this type of criticism is the same, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still leading the way, trying to sabotage diplomatic efforts to solve the Iranian nuclear dilemma and undermine the Biden presidency from the get-go.
But that is wrong, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh is not about Biden, it is about Israel’s nearly three-decade effort to prevent Iran from getting a bomb. It is Israel trying to demolish a threat for its existence.
The assassination is just the latest in a series of steps over the last three decades taken to prevent Iran from getting the ability to do it. The killing of Fakhrizadeh will set back Iran’s efforts to attain the bomb because he was a key player in the nuclear program.
Iran has been unable to realize its nuclear ambitions up until now, though it has been trying since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, is not because of a lack of trying, or because they are any less capable than any of the other countries that have nuclear weapons. Rather, it’s because of actions that Israel and others in the West have taken over the years to bar their path.
These actions included setting up straw companies selling damaged goods to the Iranians so that when they would spin their centrifuges, they would blow up; computer worms and cyber sabotage; mysterious explosions; and assassinations.
Most people, when imagining how Israel might stop Iran from getting a bomb, imagine it will be via bombs or missiles falling from the skies, as was the case when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, or the Syrian one in 2007. It has to be a new strategy and a new game plan in 2020.
Iran has been kept from reaching its nuclear goals through numerous actions, of which the killing of Fakhrizadeh is just the most recent one, through one big dramatic explosion. To present the killing of Fakhrizadeh as a move intended simply to make things more complicated for Biden is to fail to fully appreciate the degree to which the Israeli government genuinely believes a nuclear Iran is an existential threat that must be stopped at all costs.
The killing need not undermine the diplomacy that Biden might want to pursue. The hit was carried out under the outgoing Trump administration. If Iran does indeed want to turn over a new leaf with the new administration – which it is very much in its interests to do – then it would only be counterproductive to let this killing stand in the way.
Israeli perspective that the JCPOA is a non-starter because under its terms, Iran will be able to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wants in 2030 is worth noting. And as steps such as Friday’s assassination show, Israel – if it was involved – is not going to sit idly by and allow what it deems to be an existential threat to develop, regardless of who is the US president.
