Assassination Of Iranian Scientist Likely An Effort To Kill Biden’s Chance For Peace

By NewsHound Ellen — November 28, 2020

The assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, presumably by Israel, was probably aimed at saddling Joe Biden’s presidency with a war, a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear sites or, at the very least, preventing him from re-joining the Iran nuclear agreement.

On MSNBC Saturday, Iranian guest Trita Parsi explained that while Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani wants to avoid starting a war with Israel over the assassination, he may be pressured into one.

PARSI: The latest that's happening is that the Iranian president has come out with a statement essentially saying that Iran is not gonna walk into what he called a trap by the Israelis to escalate and create a war because that is, in his assessment, what the Israelis want.

But it is not clear if that is the view of other elements inside the country. Some of this debate is starting to be taking place in public in which the argument that is made by the other side is that these assassinations continue to take place precisely because, in their view, Iranians have not responded harshly enough to previous attacks and the only way of preventing future attacks is to respond really harshly to this one. If that happens, however, then there is a very significant risk for a major escalation, potentially of war which, according to Rouhani, is what Netanyahu is looking for.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a veteran of both the Army and the State Department, said it would be “extremely unusual” for Israel not to have informed the Trump administration of the assassination. Quoting former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Wilkerson said, “The Saudis are willing to fight the Iranians to the last dead American. And I would add Bibi Netanyahu in that.”

According to Wilkerson, the fix against Biden is in.

WILKERSON: They want as a major outcome a war. As a middle ground outcome, they want a bombing campaign by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear facilities. and as a minimum amount they want to foreclose any possibility of the new president, Joe Biden, reentering the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement with Iran. And it looks like they're well on that road to success.

Nayyera Haq, another State Department veteran, said that the U.S. abandonment of the Iran nuclear agreement “really opened the door” for Israel and the Saudis to influence the Trump administration against Iran. Now, “they’re looking at a ticking time clock” on “how much can they box in Biden's options by engaging the United States under a Trump administration or while Trump is still commander in chief?”

However, Biden may be able to escape the trap laid for him by forcefully signaling opposition to the assassination:

PARSI: It's also important to recognize that Netanyahu must also have calculated that Biden probably does not have the political will to inflict a cost, impose a cost to Netanyahu if he does these things to box in Biden. And I think it is up to the Biden administration to prove Netanyahu wrong because I doubt that Netanyahu would have gone down this path unless he felt that it was pretty much cost-free from him. not just from Trump but also from Biden.