Shameful humiliation for Iran: one of the country’s most protected people has been persecuted

A senior Iranian official said Fakhrizadeh had been killed in a new “complex operation” and blamed Iran’s greatest enemy, Israel, and an expatriate opposition group.

“The operation was very complex, it involved the use of electronic equipment and there was nothing on the scene,” said Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The Organization of the Iranian People’s Mujahideen (MEK), along with the “Zionist regime and Mossadu, certainly” contributed to the attack, the Rear Admiral said of the Israeli government and the foreign intelligence agency.

“The enemy has used a completely new, professional and tailor-made approach and has achieved its goal,” he added. Shamkhani did not specify what weapons were used during this operation.

Videos of his comments were broadcast on state television and the Fars news agency.

Fars reported that the attack was carried out using a “remote-controlled automatic rifle” mounted on a van. The agency did not indicate its source of information.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has accused Israel of acting as a “mercenary” in the United States by assassinating Fakhrizadeh.

Named the “father of the nuclear bomb,” Iran’s Fakhrizadeh led Iran’s so-called “Amad” program. Israel and the West suspect it was a military program aimed at exploring Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon. At the time, Tehran has long argued that its nuclear program is peaceful in nature.

An Iranian scientist died from injuries at the hospital, the Iranian defense ministry said. His report said that Fakhrizadeh had been “seriously injured” when the attackers fired on his car and were involved in a shootout with his bodyguards during an attack near Tehran.

Fakhrizadeh had targeted Iran’s enemies for “twenty years,” and such an attack was predictable, Shamkhani said.

“The security forces have anticipated the possibility of such an attack against him, even predicting the location of a possible incident,” he said during the scientist’s funeral in Tehran.

However, since these types of complaints have been frequent during these twenty years, “unfortunately, this has not been taken seriously enough”.

According to Iranian Defense Minister Amiro Hatami, Fakhrizadeh was one of his deputies and headed the Ministry’s Defense, Research and Innovation Organization, which focused on “nuclear defense.”

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly refused to comment on the attack.

The turmoil that has emerged on Iranian social media since Fakhrizadeh’s assassination is difficult to describe. Numerous tweets and comments condemn the country’s intelligence and security apparatus, accusing students, women’s rights activists, journalists and dissidents of repression, but disabling attempts to “prevent the assassination of the country’s most important nuclear scientist,” according to dw.com.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh was assassinated on November 27. In the suburbs of Tehran. The assailants fired bullets at his car and then detonated a truck that was a few meters away. This is the third fatal mistake made by the Iranian security apparatus, which regularly boasts that everything in the country is under control, in less than a year.

Until that fateful Friday, it was virtually impossible to find photos of Fakhrizadeh online. Called the father of Iran’s nuclear program, the scientist was one of the country’s most protected citizens.

The scientist was similarly attacked in 2008 when motorcycle assailants planted an explosive in his car. Just before the explosion, he managed to jump out of the car.

Shameful information leak

Fakhrizadeh, who specialized in missile production, was officially named in 2018 as a key figure in Iran’s nuclear program. The fact became clear when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed secret information leaked by secret Mossad agents.

During a special press conference, Netanyahu revealed top-secret data related to Iran’s military nuclear program and told those present: “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”

According to Israeli intelligence, Fakhrizadeh led Iran’s military nuclear program, codenamed Amad (“Hope”), in the early 21st century.

Mossad agents in Tehran were able to kidnap about 55,000 people during an operation in 2018. classified intelligence. The officers are believed to have used special tools to help open the safes. It is stated that without the help of a person working on the storage facility, he would not have been able to do so.

The successful Mossad operation in Tehran was a painful humiliation for the Iranian security apparatus, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (a branch of the Iranian military). The Guard, which is officially responsible for the military protection of Iran’s nuclear program, employs only people from the country’s military forces.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guarded Fakhrizadeh and Soleimani

Ms. Fakhrizadeh, 63, was also a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and joined it when she was young. He was protected before his death, as was General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds forces. P. Soleimani died in January during a US military attack that was not rescued by the Guard.

The Iranian Justice Department has accused a translator in Syria of extraditing Soleimani to the Mossad and the CIA. According to the spokesman, Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, who was executed in July under the guise of an interpreter, had access to classified information and regularly transmitted it to the United States and Israel for large sums of money.

The fact that MM Mady was officially arrested in October 2018 raises the question of how he managed to obtain and transmit information about the whereabouts of Q. Soleimani in his prison cell.

The Iranian Justice Department and the intelligence services of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have never provided an answer to these questions.

Recurring security breaches

The July explosion at Iran’s Naranz nuclear facility caused severe damage and disrupted uranium enrichment processes. “The explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility is the result of sabotage, and security officials will soon reveal the real cause of the incident,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s nuclear organization, told state television in August. The people responsible for the incident have not been identified so far.

November 27 Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the paramilitary forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, publicly vowed revenge for Fakhrizadeh’s death.

On social media, her pompous statement received quite a negative reaction.

“Also, how did he get revenge on Q. Soleimani when he attacked an abandoned US base and shot down a plane carrying innocent people?” The disaster claimed 176 lives.

On Twitter, the situation was also commented on by Iranian journalist Mehdi Mahdavi Azad based in Iran. Here’s how he summed up the response from the online community: “Information about the country’s nuclear program has been leaked, the country’s most protected people are being killed, and attacks on nuclear facilities are underway. And most of what the security forces can do is go after journalists. “

There will be consequences

According to Bloomberg reviewer Bobby Ghosh, the assassination undoubtedly has some signs of a campaign to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists that can be attributed to Israel: Four Iranian nuclear scientists died between 2010 and 2012.

Israel has never acknowledged this, but has apparently stopped the campaign after pressure from President Barack Obama; The latter negotiated a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Netanyahu has always opposed the treaty and remains convinced that Iran is secretly pursuing a nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh ran the program until at least 2003, when a US intelligence report ruled that it was suspended. But after years of silence, he established a research center in Tehran, along with a whole group of scientists involved in the nuclear weapons program.

Fakhrizadeh is sometimes referred to as Iran’s Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the 1950s American atomic bomb. But his assassination is unlikely to have a decisive impact on Iran’s nuclear program, which is believed to have hundreds of scientists and enough institutional knowledge, even without Mr. Fakhrizadeh.

The main concern is that the assassination will set off a chain reaction within the regime, increasing pressure to retaliate against Israel or the United States.

Hossein Dehghan, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and one of the leading candidates in Iran’s presidential election next summer, has already vowed revenge.

Alarm bells sounded last week when Iran released an Australian scientist handed over as a hostage in exchange for three Iranians jailed in Thailand following a retaliatory attempt during 2010-2012. murders. Sent to Bangkok to kill Israeli diplomats, they inadvertently set off explosives in his own village.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh was assassinated at a particularly difficult time for the Iranian leadership, both politically and militarily.

The end of the period of mourning, which usually lasts 40 days, will coincide with the first anniversary of the assassination of Q. Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s paramilitary forces.

For supporters of the hardline regime, this will serve as an embarrassing reminder that they have not delivered on the revenge they promised a year ago.

The fact that Fakhrizadeh’s important role in the nuclear program is already influencing the international network of Iranian rebel groups does not help.

The failure of the regime to protect its most important scientist, in his homeland, will become an even greater humiliation.

At the same time, Iranians are well aware that if they manage to stay calm and refrain from acting in the final days of the Trump administration, they may receive a more favorable response from Joe Biden, writes a Bloomberg surveyor. A fierce response to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination is unlikely to allow Tehran to wait for concessions from the new president.

Politically, in this case, it may be convenient for the regime for everyone to do the opposite of what Netanyahu suggested and forget the name of the murdered scientist.
But an election campaign that is supposed to be dominated by the hardliners makes that opportunity nearly impossible. The gin has already left the bottle.