Iran blamed Israel for today’s ambush that sprayed 63-year-old top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh with bullets, killing who’s referred to as the father of Iran’s nuclear program. While fingers point toward Israel’s Mossad security service, it’s possible that it was a joint mission with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was in many ways driven by Iran’s history with the CIA when it aided Iranian rebels that backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to topple July 15, 1952 Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, installing the Shah as Iran’s supreme monarch ruler. Iranian officials blamed the CIA for assisting in the coup d’etat that toppled Mosaddegh, a known socialist. It was nearly 30 years later that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei would take revenge sacking the U.S. embassy in Tehran Nov. 4, 1979, seizing 52 Americans hostages for 444 days.
Since toppling the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the U.S. has not had formal diplomatic relations with Iran, essentially in a tit-for-tat guerrilla war, with threats and counter threats happened for the last 41 years. Targeted assassinations, territorial skirmishes in the Persian Gulf, and a series of proxy wars have defined U.S.-Iranian relations, especially with Iran’s feverish development of nuclear technology. Iran’s nuclear program bought its technology from Pakistan’s rogue nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, giving Fakhrizadeh the designs to build Iran’s centrifuges. Former Iranian President Ahmadinejad declared Feb. 11, 2010 Iran a nuclear power on former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s watch. As Ahmadinejad defied the U.S. and U.N. over Obama’s eight years in office, he acquiesced in 2013 to negotiating a so-called nuclear deal that favored Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 71, practically stood on his head, begging Obama to reconsider capitulating on a nuclear deal with Iran. When Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congres March 3, 2015, it was already too late, Obama, and his 76-year-old Secretary of State John Kerry were too close to inking the deal. When it finally took place July 15, 2015, it horrified skeptics, not believing that Iran would ever submit to U.N. nuclear inspections in its Top Secret military sites. With Iran getting $1.6 billion in cash and $150 billion in sanctions relief, Iran went on a state-sponsored terror binge, supplying Houthi rebels in Yemen Iranian rockets and ballistic missiles to wage war against Saudi Arabia. Israel watched Iran supply rockets and missiles to Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, wreaking havoc on Israel’s southern-and-northern borders.
By the time 74-year-old Donald Trump was elected, he realized what Obama, Biden and Kerry had done, with full backing from the P5+1, including the U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany, giving Iran an unobstructed runway to the A-bomb. Netanyahu tried to reason with Obama but it was all about Obama’s legacy, not Israeli national security. Iranian officials pledged, from the Ayatollah to lowly members of the Al Quds Force like the late Qassem Solemani, that they would destroy Israel. Netanyahu showed Obama that he was giving Iran a clear path to the bomb but no one listened until Trump came around. Finally, Israel had and ally that saw through Iran’s naked nuclear ambitions and did something about it. Trump’s decision May 8, 2018 to cancel Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] was all about Iran’s proxy wars against Saudi Arabia and Israel.
When Obama entered a deal with Iran, he didn’t understand the history, where Iran has zero trust for the U.S. and would do everything possible to cheat on any deal, especially if there was no real mechanism for verification. Obama’s Nuke Deal allowed Iran to exclude the U.N.’s Geneva-based International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspectors from entering Iran’s secret military sites where it was spinning Urainum 242 in A.Q. Khan-designed high-speed centrifuges. With Fakhrizadeh vaporized, the Ayatollah looks only for revenge, not realizing that cheating on his nuclear program brought him appropriate resistance. While Trump vowed that Iran would not get a bomb on his watch, Obama and Biden never committed to that. When Biden takes office Jan. 20, 2021 he has some catching up to do about Iran’s blatant cheating on the well-intentioned but misguided JCPOA.
Ayaytollah Ali Khamenei’s spokesman Hossein Dehghan issued a warning to those responsible for Fakhrizadeh’s death. “In the last days of their gambling ally’s political life, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full-blown war,” Dehghan said. “We will descend like lightening on the killers of this oppressed martyr and we will make them regret their actions!” hinting at what’s to come. When Biden confers with his 58-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken, 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and 51-year-old Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, they won’t be able to sell Iran on good-cop, bad-cop, blaming Trump for bad U.S. foreign policy. Biden and his national security team will have to face what the remaining P5-+1 have found, that Iran has cheated-and-lied about its compliance with the JCPOA. There can be no business-and-usual with Iran unless they permit the IAEA intrusive inspections of secret military sites.
