The Article below was published in Vol. 136, Issue 4 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on December 4, 2020.
By: Maryam Javed ‘21
Opinions Editor
Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated last Friday, November 27, 2020. American and Israeli intelligence believe that Fakhrizadeh was a part of a secret program to create an atomic weapon, which suggests that one of the governments could potentially have a role in the scientist’s death. An American official has stated that Israel is behind the attack but the White House and C.I.A. have yet to confirm or deny this claim.
Iranian officials believe that Israel is behind the attack. Iran’s leader, Hassan Rouhani promised retribution for the killing of the country’s most prominent nuclear scientist. According to Iranian media sources, Fakrizadeh was ambushed by a remote-control gun mounted on a car. There are many contradictory reports stating how Fakhrizadeh was assassinated. Some even say that it was gunmen that killed him. It remains unclear how the scientist met his death but it is evident that he was a major target especially for countries that oppose the Iran nuclear deal.
This is not the first time that nuclear scientists in Iran have been targeted. Relations with Iran and the United States remain tense with current sanctions put in place by the Trump administration and the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, which occurred earlier this year.
I believe that the reason behind the orchestrated attack was to make it more difficult for president-elect Joe Biden to pursue negotiations with Iran and sign the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump withdrew from when he entered office. The Biden administration seeks to resume the deal that Obama had signed during his term in 2015, but many foreign actors are against this, seeing the deal as lethal. The Trump administration, Israel, and many of the Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, oppose the revival of this deal and it is possible that any of these states could take extreme measures to do so.
Even though U.S. officials have not commented about the attack, President Trump has asked his top advisors to bomb Iran’s nuclear site. It is clear that the Trump administration does not have a good relationship with Iran; it would not be surprising if the U.S. was behind the attack, a theory that if proven true, will definitely have repercussions for president-elect Biden when he enters office.
