The murder is sure to provoke harsh reactions in Iran.
The assassination of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, whoever was responsible, could have far-reaching implications for the future Biden government. It is sure to spark a harsh response in Iran, as was the January 3 American attack that killed Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian major general who led the elite quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh could hamper President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s efforts to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, as he promised if the Iranians agree to return to the boundaries set in the deal.
President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, unraveling the foreign policy achievement of his predecessor Barack Obama, and isolating the United States from Western allies trying to keep the deal intact. Mr Trump then imposed severe sanctions on Iran in order to force him back to the negotiating table, which Iran refused.
Israel has long spoken out against the nuclear deal, and if its agents were responsible for the murder of a man considered a national hero – in Iran they are almost certainly accused of being behind it – there could be political pressure in Iran to carry on with its current one Efforts to gradually rebuild the nuclear fuel stocks that were abandoned in 2015.
American officials made no comment on the attack Friday morning, saying they were looking for information. However, some American officials argued that the death of Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a series of such mysterious murders of the best Iranian nuclear scientists, would send a chilling message to the other leading scientists in the country working on this program: if we can get it ‘We can get you too.
The assassination of Mr. Fakhrizadeh comes just two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader was gunned down by Israeli bombers on a motorcycle on the streets of Tehran on August 7 at the behest of the United States.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went from Nom de Guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was accused of being one of the masterminds of the deadly attacks in 1998 on two US embassies in East Africa. He was killed along with his daughter Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden.
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