The head of Iran’s nuclear program is assassinated
Today we have the news that Israel’s Mossad has assassinated the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Reports are that his vehicle was “stopped by explosives” and then he was shot. I would like to know further details – such as who these agents were and how they discovered exactly where Fakhrizadeh would be – but I very much doubt we’ll ever learn.
Israel isn’t messing around. With the Trump-negotiated Abraham Accords giving Israel a bit of breathing room for the moment, and yet with the Iran-loving Biden poised to take charge, Israel doesn’t want to leave Iran in a good position to take advantage of a Biden presidency.
One of the many many many things I have dreaded when contemplating the possibility of a Biden win is its effects on the Middle East. The nightmare of the Obama years come back, only with less charisma and even less competence.
The mess the old Democrat gang can make internationally in the next four years is one of my major worries.
“Oh, f___. Biden is on his way in. We’d better mount a black op against Iran while we can.” — the rational Israeli reaction to the 2020 US presidential election
John Brennen commented:
“This was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict.
Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits.”
Gives you a warm and fuzzy for the things to come from Biden/Harris, right?
Neo,
With a pending Democratic president, particularly because it’s Joe Biden, the solution to this problem among Democrats begins with recalling and updating the Clinton lraq-Iran dual-containment framework — see https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-clinton-administrations-approach-to-the-middle-east — which the Bush administration faithfully upheld before the Obama administration radically deviated course with Iraq and Iran.
“The head of Iran’s nuclear program is assassinated”
I’m really a softie, I just love warm gooey sentimental stories like this one.
Brennan’s comment made it sound like he wouldn’t be all that upset if Iran *did* retaliate against the “perceived culprits”. Note that he doesn’t even care whether Israel did it or not (though they almost certainly did), the “perception” is enough for him.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/obamas-revisionist-promised-land/
In line with this Obama’s recent memoir (only his third!) bristles with anti-Zionist hostility. He will be pressuring Biden through his leftist acolytes to take the most anti-Israel stance possible. Already Biden’s foreign policy appointees are being criticized for being too pro-Israel – because some of them are Jewish – even though it is unlikely they are that far away from Obama’s views to begin with.
Aside from Brennan, Bidet, Obama and Kerry must be besides themselves with grief that the top Iranian nuke scientist was taken out. They probably threw up their turkey upon hearing this terrible, terrible news.
It must have been that darn video (the one that CAUSED Benghazi attack; just ask Susan Rice , Obama and Hillary ) that caused the assassins to kill the Iranian nuke guy.
But do not fret folks; Bidet will make Israel pay for this somehow and to make the Iranian mullahs feel better, Bidet will send over a few planeloads of cash to Iran.
After all, history has shown very very clearly that to placate an enemy who wants you dead, you just give them cash (or equal) and they will become your best pals (see Neville Chamberlain; he gave away part of a sovereign nation that had no say in the matter).
As for Netanyahou , he had better not wear his best clothing when he visits the White House.
He will be invited of course, so that Bidet can severely scold him for causing all the problems in the ME, immediately after which he will be escorted, along with the White House trash, out the back door.
After 8 years of Obama, Benji already knows the way out the back.
Bidet’s foreign policy will be based on the same ideology that informed Ocommie and Kerry and Hilary; that the USA – and Israel – are the root cause of all the world’s problems, and requires that the USA genuflect before the entire world and beg forgiveness (and/ or bribe them with taxpayer dollars).
I often wonder why Israel has more competent assassins than we do. We assume it was Israel, because if it were the U.S. it would have been a drone strike. On the other hand, I would not assume that there are no enterprising Iranians for hire.
I surmise that what bothers Brennan is that if Iran retaliates it will be after Biden is in the WH–if he is. I think Iran got a feel for what would happen if they retaliated against a U.S. target while Trump’s finger is on the trigger.
At any rate, I doubt that the Sunni world will mourn the loss of an Iranian asset to their nuclear program; so no repercussions for the peace initiatives with Israel.
Israel’s flamboyance on display.
Go for “it” if you have to.! Make a big show of it. Friend and foe please take note: Israel is willing and able to successfully carry out any mission necessary in defense of its strategic interests anywhere in the Middle East.
The assassination of a valued military asset of the IRI happened within the ear shot of Persian gulf Arabs distrustful of IRI’s intensions.
Not too difficult to imagine a collective murmur of thank-you-Israel must’ve escaped the latter’s lips..
Meanwhile the IRI’s prestige as a serious regional military player took another hit and that of Israel is enhanced.
Could this action further ease the restrains on the willing Arabs each to consider her own goal of adopting the noble Abrahamic peace accord?
Time will tell. But dual assassinations of Al-Qaeda’s al-Masri in Tehran some two weeks ago and now that of the scientist, who were both out of reach of Arab states, are good persuasive arguments towards Israel being a legitimate partner in the regional defense against ambitious global terrorists and jihadists.
YAY, MOSSAD!
Oldflyer
I think Iran got a feel for what would happen if they retaliated against a U.S. target while Trump’s finger is on the trigger.
Yup, I think they do. I am reminded of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who informed us that Trump is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t in the Middle East. Sen. Chris Murphy condemns Soleimani airstrike days after claiming ‘no one fears’ US during embassy assault.
Then when Trump does something, he is a warmonger.
Yup, “congressional authorization” is just what we needed. Even if congressional authorization to kill Soleimani had been granted in a closed hearing, rest assured a Demo would have leaked it to the press.
That’s who we need for Secretary of State. 🙂
Several months later it came out that Senator Murphy had met with Iran’s foreign minister. There are, however, limits to the idiocy of a Democrat’s foreign policy moves. Senator Murphy approved of the 2 Gulf Coast Arab states establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Foreign policy, and specifically foreign policy in the Middle East, is the biggest fear I have of a potential Biden Administration. A lot of what the lefty Demos hiding behind the Biden curtain will try to do domestically can be mitigated or stopped by having about half the country in opposition. Biden and his minders will have a lot more leeway of foreign policy.
Foreign policy was the main reason why I changed from Democrat to Republican. The best role for Democrats in foreign policy is to what foreign restaurant to choose for takeout.
While the Israelis are getting credit, if I were placing bets I would bet money they had close cooperation with the Saudis. The Trump peace deal that Jared has engineered is but one aspect of a profoundly changing region. The important thing is, Trump has not attempted to dictate foreign policy or use regional governments as gamepieces, one-against-the-other, in a world chessboard. He has shown deference and offered assistance & facilitation, never insisted authoritatively.
The result is, the region’s countries are talking to each other and have no taste for obnoxious Yankee instruction. Brennan, Kerry, all those failed foreign policy and intelligence hacks – their grift is up. I think there’s no use trying to assert a world leader role – these countries have figured it out largely on their own, and will rightfully tell Biden’s team to get stuffed and hit the road.
Kerry has already figured out that there’s no future for him in foreign policy – he’ll take the cushy Climate Czar job and find lots of reasons to get the use out of his Paris apartment, cutting new stupid deals and reinvigorating the hopelessly irrelevant and economically destructive Paris Climate Accord. It’ll make him look important, and that’s #1 in John Kerry’s book of him being #1.
I know it won’t happen but I would hope that while they tell Biden’s team to hit the road they give President Trump and Jared a prominent role at the peace table.
Aggie: Good points.
But the great Biden danger is cozying up to China, undoing all that Trump has done to try to retrieve manufacturing back to the US.
80% of our antibiotics are made in China; your life literally depends on China! All sorts of generic meds originate in China.The Fentanyl that kills thousands of young US druggies yearly is all made in China. China could shut that down in an instant but will not do so.
In my Southern town of 100,000 there is a public elementary Chinese immersion school. My daughter tells me the same exists in Durham, NC, home of the elite Duke U.
This is a really nifty way to neutralize parents. They can’t check readings or homework done in Mandarin. Elementary-age kids are so easily indoctrinated, too.
Scary.
Good! Now do the American head of Iran’s bomb.
Eric,
The “Clinton lraq-Iran dual-containment framework” did not ‘contain’ Iran, it just slowed them down a bit. Iran was making slow progress toward Nuclear Intercontinental capability under both Clinton and Bush. Obama just sped it up.
FOAF @ 5:33,
🙂
Nukes were devised seventy five years ago. Now, even Pakistan has them. You don’t need a cross between Oppenheimer and Einstein today. You need a good scientist with good executive skills. IOW, he can be replaced.
But the Iranians have to be going nuts about how a gang of gunmen knew when and where the guy was going to be traveling. If there’s any traffic on the road, they had to know which car was his to pop their op.
Iran will be turning their intel system and their nuke system inside out trying to find out how these guys KNEW. Everything.
There will be a number of severe interrogations which will no doubt miss any of the actual conspirators but yield many dead–but expensive–ends.
A number of engineering grad students will change their majors to Persian lit or something.
And then, here in what is supposed to be an organized country, a bunch of gunmen planned to pull this off and then get away. Which, apparently, they have. How on Earth? It’s possible a handful of convicts will be faked as the gunmen and hanged, to convince the population.
The amount or organization necessary to pull this off is big. But one thing which will be necessary is the realization that much organization was necessary WITHIN Iranian agencies, from police departments to air defense to the nukes department to the intel guys.
Even if you posit that the gunmen flew in on some soopersekrit invisible helicopter, and back out, they still knew where to go and when.
As I remarked earlier, this guy can likely be replaced. The second order effects are the big deal.
What if agency meetings are held by Zoom, or some local variant, or something run up for the purpose? This will preclude a lot of traveling but it’s inefficient and can be hacked.
What if a different agency is tasked with the bigs’ security? Be a stumble or two in the hand over.
What suspicion about other issues falls on the agencies which failed in this case and how does that affect their work product, or its acceptance by Higher?
Love to know how this happened.
This wasn’t that hard to pull off. A small team of spec ops guys could easily do it. In all likelihood, the guy followed the same route each day to the facility where he worked and arrived and left around the same time. A bit of covert reconnaissance would establish identifying his car. Someone would be placed to signal ahead when he left, so the rest of the team would be ready to attack.
The hardest part would be covertly implanting the explosive device on the roadway and the timing needed to activate it to stop the car to enable the assassination. That of course presumes that reports are accurate about how the assassination was accomplished.
Geoffrey Britain:
I’ve read that he was actually secretive and reclusive, a shadowy figure, and certainly there is no reason to believe he had some regular daily route. He was apparently well aware that people might be out to get him. From the WaPo, for what that’s worth (I read more about it somewhere else, but I can’t find it now):
GB. The Iranians would have to be convinced it was easy. A small team of spec ops guys got to set up their ambush with nobody noticing. They got in. They got out. No biggy, right?
How on Earth did that happen, the Iranians are asking themselves.
But the point is, the gunmen freaking KNEW. If you’re right about somebody signaling when the target left the parking lot….who? Where did he come from? Why wasn’t he arrested for loitering around a secret facility? Because he freaking worked there, has to be the answer. The follow on to that is ominous. What to do about it. Likely, the guy on the inside was searched going in to work, and leaving for home. Somehow, despite that, he had real-time commo with the shooters. If the conclusion is nobody could have at the time of departure, everybody else being accounted for as someplace else or in a group watching each other–waiting for a bus,maybe–and whose cell phone activity is monitored. Then what?
If he didn’t mind a particularly agonizing martyrdom, then maybe a system could be ginned up that would work once and then he’s caught. But they’d make him tell who his contacts are and….we don’t want that.
We used to watch Seal Team on television. Before an op, they always had a briefing explaining everything they were going to face. It may have been a plot device to clue in the viewers, but the point is spec ops guys know the assistant cook’s mother’s maiden name. The SEALs aren’t the first on the target. Same for other spec ops. They’re the trigger pullers who come after whatever intel sources there are. Could be sigint. Could be somebody in house on our dime. Could be the guy with the fruit stand on the corner for the last four years.
Point is, the Iranians don’t know and the gyrations to try to find out are going to be a real problem for the effort going forward, not to mention any poor schlub under suspicion.
Then, of course, there are the new regulations. Security, by its nature, reduces the efficiency of the secured asset. So there’s always a point at which the trade off reaches “enough”. This obviously wasn’t “enough” so the new regime is going to have to be more intrusive and reduce efficiency even further.
Anything that riles Brennan and Rhodes is, by definition, good.
https://nypost.com/2020/11/29/irans-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-killed-hit-squad-report-says/
Wow. Sixty-two people, says the report. Lots of insider knowledge to make this work.
Great work, Iranian intel and security. Sixty two bad guys wandering around fixing to kill one of your stars and….nobody noticed?
I wouldn’t want to be in anything resembling intel in Iran just now. Suspicion spreads when it’s easier to believe than to believe the hated enemy is so freaking good.
yes there is a whole lot of smoke, why was he at demavand, because that’s the site of a nuclear facility discovered in 2013, the locals weren’t appreciative, as there were major riots last year, as money was diverted there, but much like soleimani in baghdad he felt safe.
Israel and America need to get things (such as arms deliveries) done before January 20, 2021.
yes, they really haven’t made much progress, despite the imput of pakistani, north koreans and I’m assuming russian scientists,
The Internet is an information super highway. Never have I been so confused about what is really going on in the world.
“…the assassination was done using an automatic machine gun operated with a remote control and not with gunmen who were on the ground… The shots were fired from an automatic machine gun which was mounted on the pickup truck and operated by remote control…Seconds later the Nisan pickup truck exploded in what looks like a self destruct mechanism.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-nuclear-scientist-shot-mounted-remote-controlled-machine-gun
True? Agiprop? Who knows.
“One of the many many many things I have dreaded when contemplating the possibility of a Biden win is its effects on the Middle East. The nightmare of the Obama years come back, only with less charisma and even less competence.” -Neo
Neither Biden nor Harris has Obama’s charisma (thank goodness).
Nor does anyone else on their team.
Likewise, neither of the leads has any competence, but the only thing Obama was good at was giving cover to whoever was actually managing his administration’s actions.
Remember, he never knew about anything until he read it in the papers.
I would like to know who was actually running his foreign ops (wonder what Valerie Jarrett is doing these days), but one sure thing is that the same person(s) are going to be running Biden’s, so the level of competence (however we define that) will be maintained.
That’s not good news.
Odds are good, however, that it won’t be John “figurehead” Kerry.
Chases Eagles: I vote that the second report is indeed agitprop.
One deadly remote pick-up is a lot better for Iran’s “face” than 62 assassins operating with impunity. I suspect reality is somewhere in the middle ground.
Somebody (probably more) in Iran knows the truth: a running gun battle with four bikers and the Santa Fe driver would be hard to miss.
However, we know Iran lies about their lies, and it’s hard to get trustworthy reports from inside the country.
Also, Israel knows what really happened.
More on why I doubt the Fars News report at ZH:
Looking at the example pix at ZH, wouldn’t someone have noticed the machine gun mounted in the pick-up? The target had at least 2 cars worth of bodyguards who ought to be looking for things like that.
(Waiting for the lead car to leave before striking was expert timing, and argues that the hit team knew the routine for the trip to F’s villa. The NYP only mentions three cars total; would there have been four instead, or are both counting F’s own vehicle as one of three?)
Also: who drove the pick-up into position? Are there a lot of self-driving cars in Iran? Lack of a driver ought to have aroused attention.
As for F. getting out of the car himself to check a suspicious noise: not on your tin type.
Unless he and his guards were way under standard IQ.
Any movie fan knows not to do that!
Hmm, PJM is has the remote MG story too.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/11/30/the-hit-on-irans-chief-nuclear-weapons-scientist-questions-tentative-answers-n1180258