Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, has assassinated the leader of the military component of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The killing offers five observation points.
1) Biden will not be able to return America to the JCPOA nuclear accord without significant complication
The Biden administration has prioritized America’s return to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear accord. What happened on Friday shows just how challenging this will be.
By assassinating the figurative and literal godfather of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel is laying down a marker to the incoming U.S. president. Fakhrizadeh was involved in nuclear weapons research, something the Israelis know that the Biden team knows. This attack serves as a message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President-elect Joe Biden that he intends to escalate his covert action on Tehran regardless of Washington’s policy. The Biden administration will not be able to ignore this pressure and pursue U.S. policy separate from it. After all, Iran’s hard-liner factions perceive and politicize Israeli intelligence activity as a symbiotic extension of U.S. foreign policy. They will hold the U.S. partly responsible for what has happened. Moreover, considering Iran’s sustaining blood feud with the U.S. over its January assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani, this attack makes it even likelier that Iran will retaliate against U.S. interests in some form in the first year of Biden’s presidency. Iran fears how President Trump might retaliate to any attack but believes that the Biden administration would respond timidly. That latter understanding is not without good reason, considering that the Obama administration did next to nothing when the IRGC attempted to blow up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2011. But come 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, is likely to retain a sizable U.S. government security detail after leaving office.
2) There was likely some U.S. intelligence support for this operation
Trump’s retweeting of reports and analysis on the attack indicates that the U.S. provided some support for it. At a very minimum, it indicates Trump has been briefed on Israel’s responsibility. But how might have the U.S. supported the ambush?
The U.S. intelligence community has unique, satellite-enabled technology and other persistent monitoring tools that it could have used to give the Israelis awareness of Fakhrizadeh’s convoy as it moved between its departure and intended arrival points. This would be especially useful to the Israelis at the location of the attack, which was about 90 minutes outside Tehran. The National Security Agency also has a unique means of scaled disruption of Iranian security force communications.
3) Israel’s covert intelligence presence on Iranian soil is growing
It really is extraordinary that Israel was able to target Fakhrizadeh successfully as he traveled in a convoy with a well-trained IRGC protection team. To succeed here, the Israeli Mossad likely infiltrated operators into Iran from its “Kidon” special action unit. Regardless, Mossad would have to had relied on a network of safe houses, operations officers, and highly trusted agents already inside Iran. We know from previous Mossad “shoot-and-scoot” attacks that Israel has an intelligence presence on Iranian soil. But this ambush is something altogether different. Just contemplate the obvious complexity involved in monitoring a convoy, using explosives to stop it, shooting Fakhrizadeh to death, and then evacuating without being captured. I would venture that the Israelis might also have recruited an agent from inside Fakhrizadeh’s inner circle.
4) The attack will fuel Iran’s paranoia and provoke retaliation
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the hard-liner elite at the top echelons of the security establishment will view this attack with the same, if not greater, seriousness of the U.S. operation that killed Soleimani.
It’s not just that this assassination has disrupted Iran’s covert nuclear development. It’s that Israel has done so in a very public way. That makes this a challenge to the regime’s credibility. Already paranoid, Khamenei will view what’s happened as proof positive that Iran isn’t feared by its enemies. The IRGC, increasingly riven by factional infighting, will share that perception. Evincing as much, Khamenei’s national security adviser has already warned that Iran “will land on the killers of this innocent martyr like a thunderbolt and make them regret what they’ve done.” For domestic political reasons, as much as foreign security ones, Iran will move to retaliate against a significant Israeli and/or U.S. target. Israel’s Shin Bet security service will certainly bolster its already significant protection of Israeli ambassadors. I expect the Israelis will also request additional host nation security for its diplomats.
5) This attack doesn’t portend U.S. or Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities
If Iran moves toward uranium enrichment levels that would allow it to construct a nuclear weapon, Israel will take military action against its nuclear and ballistic missile program. At that moment, Israeli concerns over retaliation and global outrage will evaporate amid fears of a second Holocaust. But we’re not there yet, and the complications of succeeding in any such military operation make it very unlikely. Unless, that is, Israel believes it has run out of options. In turn, this week’s deployment of a U.S. Navy carrier strike group to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf should not be seen as preparation for an attack. The U.S. would deploy at least two, and more likely three, carriers in anticipation of any Israeli strike.
Top line: This was a very risky and highly significant Israeli intelligence operation. Some folks are getting promoted.
