Assassination Threatens Destiny of Iran Nuclear Deal

There was no real response to the Natanz explosion, which was also attributed to Israel, other than the subsequent installation of some advanced centrifuges to indicate that the Iranian program would proceed slowly and methodically. The attacks on American forces in Iraq, many of them by Iranian officials, have decreased in recent weeks, and the feared Iranian cyberattacks on the American electoral system appeared to be more of an amateur hour – emails to some voters allegedly from a far-right Proud boys were threatened.

But the hardliners are furious and some experts fear that the combined loss of the most revered Iranian general and his most revered nuclear scientist is too much. The pressure for a response is already mounting – either a calculated, presumably on the orders of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or an unwritten flogging, possibly by a rogue element of the Iranian military or an Iranian-sponsored militia that doesn’t leave that Memo waiting for inauguration day.

That is exactly what Mr Netanyahu – and Mr Trump and his advisors – are betting on. Any retaliation could lead to American military action, exactly what Mr Trump contemplated and rejected two weeks ago when news broke that Iran was continuing to produce nuclear fuel beyond the limits of the 2015 agreement. (This move, of course, was in response to Mr Trump’s decision in mid-2018 to break out of the deal himself.)

And a cycle of military action could make it nearly impossible to restore the Iranian nuclear deal, let alone negotiate a larger, longer-lasting diplomatic deal.

If the response to the Fakhrizadeh assassination is a cycle of retaliation and countermeasures, the nuclear program will – literally – go deeper underground where bombs and saboteurs cannot reach it and cyberattacks can be ineffective.

“We should not rule out the use of force, but military strikes will not lead us to a long-term suspension of the program,” said R. Nicholas Burns, former state secretary and Iranian nuclear negotiator from 2005 to 2008 under President George W. Bush.

“Our goal is to roll back and shut down the nuclear program for decades to come,” said Burns, who now teaches diplomacy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and “to do it through persistent diplomacy is still smarter and more.” A more effective option than a military strike that could provoke a major war in the Middle East. “

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