RUTHFULLY YOURS

Accounts vary as to how Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the godfather of the Iranian bomb, was assassinated. One Iranian account claimed that he was killed by a remote controlled pick-up truck armed with a gatling gun.  Others suggest it was conducted by as many as sixty highly trained operatives.

One thing, though, is for certain.  This was a state-conducted assassination that only a handful of countries could have executed.

It is no surprise that responsibility for the attack was swiftly ascribed to Israel’s Mossad.  It had what criminologists call the categorical trinity: motive, means, and opportunity.

In a sense, it would be hardly surprising for Israel — if confronted with an opportunity — to launch such an attack.

Fakhrizadeh was central to Iran’s nuclear strategy — a plan to build a bomb with one target in mind: Israel.  Prime Minister Netanyahu called him out by name in a press conference two years ago.  Removing Fakhrizadeh constitutes a major disruption for the Ayatollahs nuclear strategy and the existential danger it poses for the world’s only Jewish state, and one painfully aware that threats of genocide can become reality.

Israel recognises what the Iranian bomb is — a singular threat to its continued survival.  It would not take more than a few such bombs to entirely eradicate its people. Iran’s pathological, feverish, dogmatic hatred of Israel means no eventuality can be excluded.

For Israel then, eliminating Fakhrizadeh was not then a matter of mere geostrategy but survival.

Yet — if the assassination itself was unsurprising — the timing was striking.

The world is now under two months away from a Biden Presidency, in which a return for the Iran Deal, negotiated while the President-Elect was Vice-President, is back on the cards.  Last week, Germany, France, and the UK (known as the E-3) who have been the deal’s biggest backers, met to chart a course for its return.

While the circumstances have moved on from those of 2015 when the original deal was signed, a return of some sort to a negotiated deal with Iran — and the commensurate boost in resources it would afford a regime financially on its knees as a result of the “maximum pressure” exerted by the Trump Administration — is now the hotly tipped most likely outcome.

Against the backdrop of all this, it seems like Israel won’t wait and see and take chances on the actions of the West.  In eliminating Fakhrizadeh, they have struck a blow against Iran’s nuclear programme before any deal-making has even gotten underway.

President Trump is said to have considered similar steps and consulted with military officials about a pre-emptive strike on one Iranian nuclear enrichment facility.  The raid was ruled out but nevertheless its consideration is telling.

The commission and consideration, respectively, of these attacks have come about at the mere spectre of a future return to the Iran Deal.  Nothing is yet agreed or set in stone but the deal’s opponents know how disastrous a resurrection would be and are acting now.

They know that Iran did not completely cease its nuclear strategy while subject to the agreement. They know that Iran took the money it received as part of the deal and used it to fund guerrilla fighters, terrorists and arms-length militias who wreaked havoc across the region. They know that Iran has used the period of the deal to strengthen its ballistic and precision missile technology.

An upswing of regional and international violence would surely return under any new deal that weakens the economic embargo on Iran. Violence follows money entering the Ayatollahs’ hands, as night follows day.

The Middle East has never made more progress than it has in recent months.  Peace deals with Israel and new economic ties are just the beginning.

All this has been achieved by isolating Iran and uniting its opponents against it.

But this week’s violence could well herald a new old normal.

None of this though is inevitable.

President-Elect Biden has still not shown his cards on where he stands on the return of the Iran Deal. If nothing else, the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will serve as pause for thought as he ponders his approach. Even if he wishes to return to a deal-making process, it might yet encourage him to do so on terms that are advantageous to the West, not for the country that needs an end to Western sanctions to pursue its nefarious aims.