Top Iranian Nuclear Scientist Assassinated
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s damaged car at the scene of the assassination (Wikipedia)
Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed near the Iranian capital of Tehran on November 27. The scientist was driving his car when the remote-controlled machine gun of a truck began firing at him, and the vehicle detonated shortly after. Israel is presumed to have been behind the attack.
Before his death, Fakhrizadeh headed the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Research and Innovation Organization. According to the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Fakhrizadeh had been on Israel’s hit list for two decades. Fakhrizadeh has not been the only scientist to be killed: other Iranian nuclear scientists have also been assassinated in the past. In the early 2010s, a series of targeted killings took place in Iran, aimed at decapitating Iran’s cadre of senior nuclear scientists. Israel was suspected to be behind these assassinations as well. While Fakrhizadeh survived the flurry of killings that claimed the lives of several of his colleagues, he did not drop off of Israel’s radar. While giving a presentation in 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that the Iranian nuclear scientist was the mastermind behind an undercover nuclear weapons program, explicitly saying, “remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.” Israel has been singled out as the most likely culprit because the style of the attack matches past Israeli attacks.
Two key, potentially telling, events preceded Fakhrizadeh’s assassination. First, former Vice President Joe Biden was named president-elect in early November. Biden stated that he intends to seek a return to the Iran Nuclear Deal, which President Trump pulled out of in 2018. Israel consistently voices its opposition to the deal and sees Biden’s victory as potentially foreshadowing a revival of Obama’s landmark foreign policy achievement. Trump, who Netanyahu hailed as “the greatest friend” of Israel above all other presidents in U.S. history, will be leaving office in January, dealing a blow to Israel’s hopes of preventing U.S. reentrance into the JCPOA.
Second, rumors emerged that on November 22, Netanyahu flew secretly to Saudi Arabia to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The Saudis have asserted that the meeting was only between bin Salman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while the Israelis have refused to address the allegations entirely. If true, the event would mark the first Saudi-Israeli face-to-face meeting in the history of the two––at least former––regional rivals. Such an encounter would also build on a wider regional trend in the context of a string of rapprochements between Israel and the Arab countries of the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan. The Israeli-Arab normalization agreements have largely been seen as an attempt to create a coalition capable of countering an increasingly powerful and capable Iran. If the meeting did indeed occur, it is not unlikely that the planned assassination of Fakrizadeh could have become a subject of discussion among the two countries that harbor a shared animosity for Iran.
The Fakhrizadeh assassination appears to have been politically motivated rather than an attempt to derail Iran’s nuclear progression. Experts suggest that Fakhrizadeh’s death is unlikely to derail Iranian research and uranium enrichment in any meaningful way. The true calculus behind taking out Fakhrizadeh is that doing so would potentially spoil a return to the Nuclear Deal all together. This appears especially likely as Trump attempts to tie Biden’s hands diplomatically through implementing sanctions on Iran in his final days in office.
In Iran, Fakhrizadeh’s death has sparked outrage, protests, and a promise to exact revenge. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been careful to give the impression that Iran will not be goaded into an impulsive response and will instead “respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time.”
In the region, the response to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination has been overwhelmingly negative. Qatar’s foreign minister called his Iranian counterpart to offer condolences and condemn the attack as “a clear violation of human rights.” Iran’s main regional allies, Iraq and Syria, also expressed condolences via their foreign ministers and cautioned that the killing would undermine regional stability. Turkey, a country that is neither a friend or foe of Tehran, also condemned the assassination. Most surprisingly, the UAE, Saudi Arabia’s stalwart ally, echoed criticisms of the action while calling for restraint.
Outside of the Middle East, the censure of the assassination has been equally biting—with the exception of the United States. The United Nations offered one of the most strident rejections of Fakhrizadeh’s killing, with a spokesperson saying, “We urge restraint and the need to avoid any actions that could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region,” and “We condemn any assassination or extrajudicial killing.” The European Union definitively labeled the assassination as “a criminal act” that “runs counter to the principle of human rights the EU stands for.” The United States has thus far refrained from issuing a statement regarding Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.