A small newspaper in Iran – which is edited by a person believed to have been an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – ran an opinion article on Sunday that called for an attack on the Israeli city of Haifa if it turns out Israel played a role in the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the scientist who has been referred to as the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Sadollah Zarei, an analyst in Iran, penned the column that said Tehran’s response should be bolder than the U.S. strike on Qasem Soleimani, the military leader killed near Baghdad International Airport in January, according to the Associated Press. Zarei said Americans and Israel are “by no means ready to take part in a war,” even if the strike killed a large number of people.
Fakhrizadeh was killed last Friday near Tehran, The New York Times reported. He was credited with leading the country’s nuclear weapons program and was a physics professor, the report said. The Wall Street Journal reported that Fakhrizadeh was widely respected in the country and had the “full trust” of its supreme leader.
His expertise involved not only technical and programmatic issues but also how to run a budding nuclear power and the mechanics of building the personnel base and infrastructure of a nuclear-weapons program in an “atmosphere of extreme secrecy,” a former U.S. intelligence official told the WSJ.
No country claimed responsibility for the killing. The Journal reported that Iran has long denied maintaining a nuclear weapons program and any effort to enrich uranium is for peaceful purposes.
The Guardian ran an editorial shortly after the killing stating Benjamin Netanyahu would first clear the assassination with the U.S. before taking such a bold action. The paper said President Trump, who failed to score a final diplomatic victory in Iran, could be creating a crisis prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration.
TREND FORECAST: Tensions continue to escalate between Israel and Iran. It was reported yesterday that a drone strike killed one of its senior Revolutionary Guard commanders in Syria and three other members of the Guard.
But, today, Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, told Iranian media, “We have not received any report in this regard, and it seems more like media propaganda.”
There have also been reports that President Trump wants to escalate tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which in turn would make it difficult for a Biden administration to renegotiate The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which President Trump unilaterally withdrew from in May 2018.
Should tensions sharply escalate in the Middle East, and oil prices, which have been moving higher over the past two weeks, move toward the $80 per barrel range as a result of military confrontations, the world equity markets and economies will crash.
