If there was any doubt that a return to ill-fated “Iran Deal” would spark almost immediate conflict in the Middle East, it was extinguished last week.
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.
