Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the scientist at the helm of the Iranian nuclear program, assassinated on November 27 in the Damavand region, northeast of Tehran, in his car. Badly injured, efforts in the hospital to save his life were useless. The news was initially denied, and it was later confirmed by the Iranian Defense Minister. The message from the Ministry of Defense referred to Fakhrizadeh as “Deputy Minister of Defense and Head of the Research and Innovation Organization (SPND)”. According to US State Department the “SPND was established in February 2011 by the UN-sanctioned Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who for many years has managed activities useful in the development of a nuclear explosive device. Fakhrizadeh led such efforts in the late 1990s or early 2000s, under the auspices of the AMAD Plan, the MODAFL subsidiary Section for Advanced Development Applications and Technologies (SADAT) and Malek Ashtar University of Technology (MUT)”.
All the leaders reacted to the killing of Fakhrizadeh, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Khameini’s defense adviser and 2021 presidential candidate Hossein Deghan, the Staff’s Chief of the Iran Armed Forces, General Mohammad Bagheri, who condemned the killing as a “terrorist” act and they promised revenge. Zarif and Deghan pointed the finger at Mossad by recalling “serious indications of Israeli role”.
Israel has not yet spoken about it, but no one would be surprised given the past killings of four other nuclear scientists: Majid Shahriari and Masoud Alimohammadi in 2010, Dariush Rezaei-Nejad in 2011 and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in 2012. One fifth, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani was saved by miracle in 2010. The methodology is always the same: a bomb to block the car and then the killer who shoots at the target. In the case of Fakhrizadeh, according to Iranian state TV, the killers initially fired at Fakhrizadeh’s car, and then a Nissan pickup was detonated to block them. The men who shot were in a SUV. Also according to the state TV, one of the killers has already been arrested. All the eliminations of scientists in the past have been blamed on Mossad and Israel has never denied them. In one of the presentation videos regarding the Iranian nuclear archive in 2018, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamyn Netanyahu, introduced Fakhrizadeh as the head of the “Amad” project of the Iranian nuclear program. There is no doubt that the scientist was in the sights of the Mossad.
Meanwhile according to New York Times three government officials, including one US official, told to the journal that Israel is behind assassination of Fakkhrizadeh.
The attack on Fakhrizadeh comes at a time of transition of the American presidency and the intention may be to influence the plans of the new American president, Joe Biden, on the Iran dossier. To confirm it there is a message from the former director of the CIA, John O.Brennan in twitter “This was a criminal act and highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage and to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits “.
Clearly this story shows us how the situation is absolutely unstable and in motion. Israel will likely continue to monitor the development of the Iranian nuclear program. Iran also, secretly, will continue to develop its own program, taking advantage of the vacuum created after the US withdrawal from the JCPOA. Since Trump withdrew from the JCPOA Iran has violated key parts of the JCPOA.
It is certainly evident that over the years the internal security of the Islamic Republic has become more vulnerable and the flaws are visible. Which will inevitably lead to internal controversies. The loss of Fakhrizadeh apparently does not seem to have the same significance as that of the General Qassam Solejmani, killed in 2019 by a drone in Iraq, or that of Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the father of the long range missile program, who was also killed in a explosion at one of the revolution guards military bases in 2011, but in reality it creates an important vacuum within the regime’s leadership.
Surely an immediate demand would not be in favor of Iran which was awaiting a change of the US presidency. But nothing is excluded, obviously after some time. Just as not even a few days ago Iran managed to use the hostages for its benefit (the release of the British-Australian researcher Kylie Moore-Gilbert after two years seems to have been done in exchange of the release of three Iranian prisoners in Thailand (Saeid Moradi, Mohammad Khazaei and Masoud Sedaghat, arrested before carrying out an assassination attempt on Israeli officers eight years ago). This is how Swedish Iranian researcher Ahamdreza Djalali, in prison in Iran accused of being an Israeli spy, could now use, accelerating his death sentence.
