The mullahs would hope for “plausible deniability” if Yemeni rebels launch a strike on their behalf, says Iranian expert.

The Houthi movement that controls almost all of northern Yemen has received so-called “suicide drones” from Iran that could hit Israel, Newsweek reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.

The extremist Shiite group, officially called Ansar Allah, has as its slogan, “Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Its years-long attempt to take over Yemen has been steadily supported by Iran while being opposed by a Saudi-led coalition.

The Iranian Shahed-136 loitering munitions are said to have a range of 2,000 to 2,200 kilometers (1,240 to 1,370 miles), putting the Jewish state within striking distance.

The Houthis have also used Iranian-made UAVs to attack Saudi Arabia over recent years.

The report said that an anonymous expert on Iran’s doings in the region confirmed images of the drones that the weekly had received.

“What [the Iranians] are trying to achieve is plausible deniability,” the expert said, “as in being able to strike either a U.S., Saudi, Gulf, or Israeli target and then having the strike traced back to Yemen, and hoping for deniability against any kind of retribution.”

As the closest U.S. ally in the region, Israel has been on high alert for weeks in case Tehran decides to avenge the Jan. 3, 2020 American assassination of one of its most senior military commanders, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The mullahs also blame Israel directly for the November assassination of its top nuclear weapons scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Israel has not admitted any responsibility for the targeted killing.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi openly warned Iran weeks ago not to try attacking Israel either directly or through any of its terrorist proxies. He said the army was prepared, whether for infiltration attempts by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, or missile strikes from further afield, such as by the Houthis.

On Sunday night, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would be designating the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

“These designations will provide additional tools to confront terrorist activity and terrorism by Ansarallah, a deadly Iran-backed militia group in the Gulf region,” Pompeo said. “The designations are intended to hold Ansarallah (the Houthi rebels) accountable for its terrorist acts, including cross-border attacks threatening civilian populations, infrastructure, and commercial shipping.”

The latest attack attributed to the Houthis was a Dec. 30 missile strike on the airport in Aden meant to kill the Yemeni prime minister and Cabinet members of a new government, who had just landed in the country. At least 25 people were killed and 110 wounded in the attack.

Source: https://worldisraelnews.com/suicide-drones-deployed-in-yemen-by-iran-within-striking-distance-of-israel

The post Suicide drones deployed in Yemen by Iran within striking distance of Israel first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Joe Biden knows Iran better than any American President since its 1979 revolution. He has personally dealt with its top officials—a few of them for decades. “When I was Iran’s representative to the U.N., I had several meetings with Biden,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, acknowledged after the U.S. election, in an interview with Entekhab, a Tehran publication. The two aren’t exactly friends. Their meetings “can be described as professional relations based on mutual respect,” Zarif said. But Biden does have the Iranian’s personal e-mail address, as well as his cell-phone number.

As one of his first acts on foreign policy, Biden wants to renew diplomacy with the Islamic Republic—and reёnter the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Biden wrote, in an essay for CNN, in September. Yet the President-elect already faces a minefield over basic issues—such as, what exactly is “compliance”? Who moves first? And how? And what about all those other flashpoints not in the 2015 accord—Iran’s growing array of missiles, its proxy militias and political meddling, which have extended Tehran’s influence across the Middle East, and the regime’s flagrant human-rights abuses?

During the transition, interested parties in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East have been posturing behind the scenes in ways that already complicate the Biden team’s thinking about how to reëngage. I’ve heard from all sides—unsolicited. “This is the silly, screwy period because everyone is trying to communicate through the press or interlocutors,” a former diplomat involved in the nuclear deal told me. Meanwhile, Trump appears determined to sabotage Biden’s plans, adding layers of military and economic obstacles. In December, the Trump Administration issued new sanctions, the latest of more than a thousand. Trump also discussed U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s main nuclear installation, at Natanz. And, since November 21st, U.S. B-52 bombers have flown three show-of-force missions—thirty-six-hour flights from as far away as Louisiana and North Dakota—around the perimeter of Iranian air space. Just before Christmas, Trump again put Tehran on notice, accusing Iranian proxies of firing rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. “Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible,” he tweeted. “Think it over.”

After Biden is inaugurated, he will have only a sliver of time—six to eight weeks—to jump-start the process before the political calendar in Iran threatens to derail potential diplomacy over the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. On March 20th, Iran marks Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on the vernal equinox, and the whole country shuts down for two weeks. After the holiday, Iran’s Presidential campaign begins, culminating in a mid-June election. President Hassan Rouhani, who charted a new course by proposing diplomacy with the United States, in 2013, is not eligible to run; Iran has two-term limits. New U.S.-Iran diplomacy could become the top election issue and impact its outcome, the Tehran University political scientist Nasser Hadian told me. “If we have a very quick comeback to the J.C.P.O.A., the chances of reformists or moderates winning the next election in June is going to be very good,” Hadian said.

For Biden, there’s also a scientific urgency. When he and Barack Obama left the White House, in 2017, the “breakout” time for Iran to build a bomb was well over a year. Several safeguards had been put in place under the nuclear deal, which was brokered, in 2015, by the world’s six major powers, during intense diplomacy that featured pen-tossing, hair-pulling, shouting, a broken leg, and other dramas. The agreement was not foolproof; it involved unpopular compromises. But it provided for unprecedented human and high-tech inspections, as well as limits on the hardware and fuel needed to assemble the world’s deadliest weapon. It also forced Tehran to destroy some of its nuclear infrastructure, limit uranium enrichment, and reduce its stockpile—with the implicit threat that the world would jointly punish the Islamic Republic, through global economic sanctions or war, if it violated the terms.

When Donald Trump leaves office this month, Tehran will need only three months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, according to a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Iran’s weapon capabilities and existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium are now greater. Its research-and-development program—simply put, what it knows, and can’t now unknow—is more advanced. And the world has not stood together since Trump abandoned the accord, in 2018, to pursue a bigger deal that also covers the four other flashpoints. Trump failed—just as he failed to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, negotiate arms control with Russia, contain China’s economic and territorial ambitions, support Venezuela’s democratic opposition, and get Mexico to pay for a wall.

Even with a new President, however, U.S.-Iran diplomacy will still be defined by decades of mutual wariness. Long haunted by the 1979 seizure of its embassy and fifty-two hostages, Washington has been reluctant to trust Tehran’s overtures. Iran is, in turn, suspicious of American outreach, given U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, in the nineteen-eighties, including intelligence that Iraq used to deploy chemical weapons and kill tens of thousands of Iranians. Biden may feel that he can make a fresh start, but Rouhani’s team has been stewing for four years over the costs of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign—and his dismissal of the boldest Iranian diplomacy in four decades. U.S. sanctions slashed Tehran’s oil exports at one point last spring by more than ninety percent, and targeted everything from the Supreme Leader’s office to the Revolutionary Guards and the Central Bank. Iran claims that the sanctions have caused two hundred and fifty billion dollars in economic losses since 2018.

For Biden, the initial step is straightforward. After the Inauguration, he or his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, can relay their intentions through Iran’s U.N. mission or directly to its foreign ministry, Richard Nephew, a former member of the U.S. negotiating team who is now at Columbia University, told me. But it will not be a “one-and-done” scenario, Nephew said, and success will require a lot more than diplomatic Band-Aids. Biden and the Iranians “have said fundamentally similar things—compliance for compliance,” Jarrett Blanc, the State Department coördinator on implementation of the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama Administration, said. “But they will first have to figure out what compliance means. It’s not dead obvious.”

Iran claims that the U.S. has to act first—since it withdrew from the deal—and do more than offer promises. “Go back to full compliance, normalize Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, stop making new conditions, stop making outrageous demands,” Zarif said, at the Mediterranean Dialogues, in early December. “And as soon as you come back to the letter of the J.C.P.O.A., let alone its spirit, we will immediately do that.” In a statement to the United Nations on December 22nd, Iran formally gave notice that it would roll back its breaches “as soon as all JCPOA participants start implementing their commitments unconditionally, effectively and in full.” Biden can lift sanctions with three executive orders, Zarif told an Iranian newspaper.

In broad terms, Biden wants Iran to roll back its recent breaches, especially on uranium enrichment. Iran, in turn, wants U.S. sanctions lifted so that it can sell more oil, tap into its financial assets frozen abroad, and revive an ailing economy also hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Tehran claims that it demonstrated restraint after Trump withdrew from the deal; it honored all its obligations for more than a year, as verified repeatedly in inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. After Trump began a rapid-fire sequence of tough economic sanctions and demanded new negotiations, Tehran responded with gradual breaches in a tit-for-tat strategy to pressure Washington. “Because the J.C.P.O.A. was negotiated based on mutual mistrust, we put in place a mechanism that if one side does not live up to its obligations, the other side can in fact reduce its commitments or withdraw altogether,” Zarif said in December. Iran has also responded to covert operations against its program. After the nuclear facility at Natanz was hit by a mysterious explosion, in July, which Tehran claimed was sabotage, Iran began building a new facility deep in the mountains—safer from aerial assault—to produce centrifuges.

The potential problems go deeper. Biden is under pressure to maintain Trump’s sanctions as leverage to win concessions—to expand the original nuclear deal as well as to negotiate new accords on the other flashpoints. For six months, there’s been talk among diplomats and foreign-policy pundits about a “J.C.P.O.A.-Plus,” which would amend the nuclear deal, notably the sunset clauses stipulating when Iran can resume aspects of its various weapons programs. (The sunset clause that limited Tehran’s ability to buy conventional arms for its aging arsenal expired in October. Other limitations on the nuclear program expire gradually over the next twenty years, although the deal stipulates that Iran will never build a bomb and will permanently allow inspections of declared and undeclared suspect sites.)

On December 21st, Britain, France, and Germany—which co-sponsored the original pact—added to the confusion when they warned that “just a commitment” to the deal was not enough. “We are standing at a crossroads today,” the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said. “To make possible a rapprochement under Biden, there must be no more tactical maneuvers of the kind we have seen plenty of in recent times—they would do nothing but further undermine the agreement,” he added. “The opportunity that is now being offered—this last window of opportunity—must not be squandered.”

Iran was outraged. “Renegotiation is out of the question,” Zarif tweeted, on December 21st. Hadian, the Tehran University political scientist, who is close to top Iranian officials, told me, “The expectation of the Rouhani government is a quick return—not one word less and not one word more, not J.C.P.O.A.-Plus, not J.C.P.O.A. 2.0.”

Iran has also proffered ideas of its own that throw a spanner in the diplomatic works. It proposed that Washington lift sanctions without signing on to the original deal again. Zarif said that Biden could, instead, acknowledge U.S. commitments under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which was passed unanimously, in 2015, as a global endorsement of the accord. If Biden formally reёnters the accord, Tehran is nervous about what rights that gives any future U.S. President, notably the ability to demand that the whole world impose “snapback” sanctions.

The deal allows any one of the six powers that negotiated the deal—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S.—to call for “snapback” sanctions if it believes Iran is cheating; the other five countries automatically have to comply. The Trump Administration invoked “snapback” sanctions in September, but, because the U.S. had previously withdrawn from the deal, the other parties refused to comply. “We don’t know who is going to be President four years from now,” Hadian told me. “So we don’t want the U.S. to have the right to ‘snapback.’ ” Iran’s new position, a person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me, “adds confusion when the benefit of what Biden proposes is clarity. The Iranians are hurting their own case. It’s a bizarre interpretation and will slow everything down.”

The assassination, in November, of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, further complicates the future. Iran blamed Israel. Tehran vowed to retaliate. Last month, the State Department withdrew some U.S. diplomats from neighboring Iraq, for fear that they could be targets. “No matter what happens between now and January 20th, Biden is determined to reëngage, with one caveat, which is that Iran could take actions which would make that commitment very difficult to adhere to,” the person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me. Endangering American lives would make Biden’s return to diplomacy “difficult if not impossible.” Biden’s first responsibility will be to “defend Americans and do what he can to help America’s allies.”

Iran’s parliament, however, did retaliate. On December 2nd, it hastily passed a law that required the government to immediately begin enriching uranium to a higher grade, closer to the level needed to fuel a weapon. It also requires that Rouhani suspend international inspections if U.S. sanctions are not lifted by mid-February. On January 2nd, Iran invoked a military analogy to describe its readiness to increase enrichment to twenty percent. “We are like soldiers, and our fingers are on the triggers,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the M.I.T.-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, on national television. “The commander should command and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce as soon as possible.” The move is still reversible if Biden acts before the sixty-day deadline. And uranium needs to be enriched to ninety percent to build a bomb.

“If, within two weeks of being President—between January 20th and no later than mid-February—Biden at least verbally says that he’s going back to the J.C.P.O.A., then Rouhani will be in a position to unconditionally return to the deal and outmaneuver everybody in Iran,” Hadian told me. “But if Biden doesn’t act, then all of Iran’s major factions will push for Iran to increase all aspects of its nuclear program, including enriching uranium to twenty percent.”

Even if Biden’s team gets an early agreement on “compliance for compliance,” the new Administration may not be able to negotiate much more until after a new Iranian President is inaugurated, in August. And then the issues only get more complex. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about Iran’s missile program, which has been pivotal to both offensive and defensive capabilities since the country’s air force was decimated during the long war with Iraq. “Over the last four years, Iran has continued to build ballistic missiles even while they’ve been under significant economic pressure,” General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., the head of U.S. Central Command, told me.

Iran has half a million men and women in uniform; it is the largest military force in the Middle East, and the fourteenth largest in the world. Yet its capabilities are limited. Missiles are “the one thing that allows them to threaten their neighbors,” McKenzie said. “They have no army they can deploy. They have no air force worthy of its name, and they have a very weak and impoverished, fractured navy. But what they do have, what they view as the crown jewel, is their ballistic-missile force.” Iran’s arsenal of missiles is “very good, and they’re getting better,” McKenzie told me. Tehran has shared many of its rockets and missiles—via the Quds Force—with proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. “It’s a problem Biden’s going to have to face,” he said.

On the eve of Biden’s Inauguration, the standoff between Washington and Tehran has grown “very tense,” McKenzie added. The dangers were palpable over New Year’s weekend, with the anniversary, on January 3rd, of the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qassem Suleimani, the Quds Force commander responsible for Iran’s military operations and proxies across the Middle East. Suleimani was a hero in Iran; billboards are plastered with his picture, honoring his “martyrdom.” A year ago, Tehran retaliated by firing missiles on an Iraqi military base that housed U.S. troops; more than a hundred Americans suffered brain injuries. The Islamic Republic has long vowed additional revenge. At a commemoration for Suleimani on New Year’s Day, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, warned that his killers would “not be safe on earth.” In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was concerned that McKenzie (who is viewed as Suleimani’s counterpart in the same theatre of operations) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Mark Milley, could be potential targets.

Any new accord—to limit Iran’s missiles and, potentially in return, the weaponry in rival Arab arsenals—will almost certainly have to include a wider array of countries. Israel and the United Arab Emirates are already lobbying to be included or have a say. Even stickier are the missiles that Iran has provided to proxies. In an end-of-year interview, the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Lebanese militia had doubled its stock of precision-guided missiles over the past year. “To develop a conventional missile program is an inherent right of any country under international law, and Iran is no exception,” the Iranian U.N. Ambassador, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said, on December 22nd. “Iran will not negotiate its legitimate ballistic-missile program.” That divide, General McKenzie said, “appears to be, at least to me, intractable.”

The even harder challenge will be finding ways to address horrific human-rights abuses, which go to the heart of the unique judicial and political systems in the Islamic Republic. After his appointment as Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan tweeted scathing criticism of Tehran’s treatment of Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian living in exile who publicized information about the 2017 anti-government protests, on the messaging service Telegram. In 2019, Zam was lured to Iraq, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped him and returned him to Iran for trial on charges of “corruption on earth.” He was hanged in December. “Iran’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, a journalist who was denied due process and sentenced for exercising his universal rights, is another horrifying human rights violation by the Iranian regime,” Sullivan tweeted. “We will join our partners in calling out and standing up to Iran’s abuses.” The furor over Zam’s execution reflected the fundamental gap between the United States and Iran under any President. Even with Biden’s commitment to diplomacy, four years may not be enough time to achieve breakthroughs on all the flashpoints between Washington and Tehran.

The post Biden faces a minefield in new diplomacy with Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Sunday is the anniversary of the American assassination of IRGC leader Qassem Soleimani, and Israel could be targeted as a close U.S. ally.

Israel’s defense forces are bracing for an attack by Iran or its terror proxies as the Islamic Republic marks the first anniversary of the assassination of one of its most important generals on Sunday.

On January 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile at a car driving away from Baghdad International Airport and killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, along with other terrorists.

Soleimani coordinated Iran’s extraterritorial military operations that included working closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, and other terrorist groups in Iraq and Yemen.

The IDF has taken into account many scenarios, including an attack by any one or a combination of these proxies. These could be a drone or missile strike from afar, such as by Yemen’s Houthi rebels’, who have carried out several similar long-distance missions against Saudi Arabia, the latest targeting Riyadh last June. Another possibility is an order from Iran to its Gaza or Lebanese clients to launch a rocket attack or infiltration attempt over Israel’s northern or western borders.

Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi already started warning Iran against targeting the Jewish state or Israeli objectives abroad two weeks ago.

“The IDF will forcefully attack anyone who is involved, in part or in full, from near or far, in action against the State of Israel or against Israeli targets,” he said.

“I am simplifying things and describing the situation to our enemies as it is,” he added. “Our retaliation plans are prepared, and they already have been practiced.”

Although the IDF Spokesman’s Unit would not confirm the report, Kan News also reported that an Israeli submarine passed openly through the Suez Canal in December, moving toward the Persian Gulf in another message to Tehran.

Iranian leaders have vowed vengeance ever since Soleimani’s assassination, and Israel has always known that as the closest U.S. ally in the region it could absorb a blow meant to send a message to Washington. Tehran has also threatened Jerusalem over the targeted killing last November in Iran of its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was believed to head the Islamic Republic’s efforts to construct nuclear weapons.

Israel has never taken responsibility for the assassination.

Source: https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-on-high-alert-for-iran-sponsored-attack-on-anniversary-of-soleimanis-death/

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USS Georgia transits Strait of Hormuz

DUBAI:  Some Middle East officials worry a “perfect storm” may be brewing in the Middle East as the final hours of Donald Trump’s time in office tick down. The United States and Israel have deployed new military assets in the Persian Gulf region, as Iran sends more ballistic missiles and drones to its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, increasing concerns of an imminent confrontation.

“It is like conditions are being set for the perfect storm,” said one official in the Persian Gulf region, who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. Navy announced Dec. 21 that the Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Georgia, accompanied by two other warships, entered the Arabian Gulf waters, joining the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that was deployed to the region late last month.

“SSGNs are one of the most versatile platforms in the fleet, equipped with superior communications capabilities and the ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. The platform can also be configured to host up to 66 Special Operations Forces,” reads a statement by U.S. 5th Fleet, whose command is based in Bahrain

The U.S. Air Force flew two B-52 bombers to the Middle East on Dec. 30 in the second such mission this month and the third since November. U.S. officials described the B-52 long-range flights to the Middle East as a message of deterrence to Iran.

Several regional analysts and observers have warned the military buildup could be a prelude to a plan by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to provoke Iran into a military confrontation that would free them to strike its nuclear and ballistic missile facilities and proxy militias in the region.

“These activities are more than just posturing. They are more like repositioning in preparation for something that could either be planned or anticipated,” said Mohammed Baharoon, the director-general of B’huth Center for Public Policy here. “Moving a strike group and a nuclear submarine and flying bombers repeatedly on dry runs are costly exercises and are more than delivering a message to Iran to keep away. Wolves don’t run for nothing.”

Baharoon pointed out that Israel’s decision to show and announce the sailing of a Dolphin submarine through the Suez Canal towards the Red Sea is by itself “a significant message and indication of a possible scenario in place.”

The displays of U.S. military are just days ahead of the first anniversary for the assassination of IRGC senior commander General Qassem Suleimani in a U.S. drone attack last January 3, in Baghdad. Iran has vowed to avenge the killing of its commander who was responsible for all IRGC operations abroad.

Israel is already engaged in a low-intensity conflict with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and their main allied Shiite militia the Lebanese Hezbollah, as Breaking D readers know. Israeli warplanes have launched about 40 air raids on basis and arms depots for the IRGC and Hezbollah in Syria in 2020. The last attack, in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, targeted what Syrian sources describe as a missile depot southwest of Damascus. Just few days earlier Israeli warplanes blasted installations at the “Syrian Military Research” compound in Hama province that, Syrian sources say, were used to build long-range artillery rockets and ballistic missiles based on technologies and parts supplied by Iran.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said they will not tolerate the deployment of Iranian ballistic missiles and other advanced weapons along the northern borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah asserted in a Dec. 27 interview that his group was on a full state of alert and was in possession of “highly accurate” ballistic missiles that can hit any target in Israel. “The (Iranian) precision missile project has not stopped and will not stop,” Nasrallah told pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen TV.

The region was already on tenterhooks after last month’s killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regarded by the West as the head of the Iranian nuclear program. Iranian officials have accused Israel of killing the scientist and promised retaliation.

Some U.S. officials noted that the recent military deployments were meant to reassert continued U.S. commitment to its Middle Eastern allies even as President Trump’s administration withdrew thousands of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The deployment of the guided-missile submarine and other vessels signals the U.S. Navy’s “commitment to regional partners and maritime security,” the Navy said, displaying its readiness “to defend against any threat at any time.”

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brig. Gen. Hidai Zilberman said in an interview with a Saudi news-site on Christmas Day that Israeli intelligence has picked up signals that Iran might use its proxies in Iraq or Yemen to attack Israel with drones or ballistic missiles.

Iran and its allies have grown more alarmed by the heightened military activities. This was also reflected in the recent interview by Nasrallah, when he suggested that the Trump administration’s remaining time in office must be managed carefully, calling the outgoing US president “crazy.”

Suleimani’s successor, Gen. Esmail Ghaani made a surprise visit to Baghdad on December 23 where he met with the commanders of Iran’s proxy militias, a few days after the U.S. Embassy compound in the Iraqi capital was targeted by Katyusha rockets.

The rocket attack on Baghdad’s diplomatic Green Zone on Dec. 20 was regarded as a terrorist act by US and Iraqi government officials.

“The United States strongly condemns the latest attack by Iran-backed militias on the International Zone in Baghdad. While no Embassy personnel were harmed, the attack caused at least one Iraqi civilian casualty and damaged Iraqi civilian property,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Baharoon says he does not think all-out war is planned. “I don’t believe the U.S. or Israel want to start a war with Iran, but they could be trying to provoke a confrontation that would provide the opportunity to target Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles installations, creating a mess for President-elect Joe Biden to deal with,” Baharoon said. “But would Iran take the bait, or keep low until Biden is in office?”

Source: click here

The post Persian Gulf Buildup By US, Israel Worries Region: ‘A Perfect Storm?’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Feb. 6, 2016. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

(December 11, 2020 / JNS) In the aftermath of the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last month, Iranian officials were quick to blame Israel and vowed imminent revenge.

While Israel has put its embassies abroad on high alert and continues to monitor threats along its borders from Iran and its terror proxies, such as Hezbollah to the north, experts seemed to agree that Tehran is likely to delay a revenge attack until the opportune moment.

Amir Toumaj, an independent Iran researcher, told JNS that among officials and media, there is both a “general call for immediate retaliation and others pushing for a delayed response, arguing that Tehran shouldn’t fall into a trap ahead of talks with the Biden administration.”

At the end of November, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it” regarding the killing of Fakhrizadeh, according to AP.

Khamenei called Fakhrizadeh “the country’s prominent and distinguished nuclear and defensive scientist.”

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani declared that “we will respond to the assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time. The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos,” according to the report.

Toumaj noted considerable calls within the regime to respond to the latest assassination, as well as previous attacks.

“There’s a lot of pressure now in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] and the government’s supporters for a response sooner rather than later, not only because this assassination was near the heart of the capital, but also because of the assassination of former general Qassem Soleimani and the Natanz explosion in the summer,” he said.

An American drone took out Soleimani in January, and Iran admitted that a fire seriously damaged its Natanz nuclear facility in July. A Middle Eastern intelligence official told The New York Times that Israel planted a bomb at the facility, and a member of the IRGC, who was briefed on the matter, also said an explosive device was used.

‘Time is on their side’

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, said the assassination of the Iranian scientist and other successful attacks on Iran are “most likely attributable to fortunate operational circumstances.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri after a cabinet meeting, March 17, 2016. Credit: Mahmoud Hosseini via Wikimedia Commons.

Inbar downplayed the timing of the assassination as connected to the results of the U.S. election and the incoming Biden administration, which has promised to resume negotiations and possibly re-enter the Iran nuclear deal.

As to the question about when Iran will seek revenge, he said that it is wrong to assume that Iran will retaliate immediately.

“They have time, and they will do something after they think it is doable and effective,” he said. “Patience is their game. Time is on their side as they progress on the nuclear path.”

Professor Ronen Cohen, Iran expert and the head of the Middle East & Central Asia Research Center at Ariel University, said the Iranians are undergoing a challenging period due to both the coronavirus and crippling U.S. sanctions.

Iran has been the hardest-hit country in the Middle East with 1 million recorded cases of COVID-19 and 50,000 deaths as a result. And in the past few years, a series of new sanctions have been enacted by the Trump administration that has had a profound effect on Tehran’s economy, as seen in nationwide protests before the pandemic hit earlier this year.

“The economy is suffering, and Iranian officials have to deal with rumors of the death of Khamenei,” he said.

An official close to Khamenei denied recent rumors on social media that the 81-year-old’s health has deteriorated, Reuters reported on Monday.

Cohen says that Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian forces are in no position to attack Israel, even from Syrian territory.

“At the end of the day, Iran is hurting and seeks revenge,” he said. “However, the risk now is too high, and it will wait to retaliate when it is sure that the result will satisfy the political and military leadership.”

Source: https://www.jns.org/experts-say-iran-likely-to-delay-retaliation-against-israel-for-assassinated-nuclear-scientist/

The post Experts say Iran likely to delay retaliation against Israel for assassinated nuclear scientist first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. (Agencies)

Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

This top-secret recording was played in 2008 by former prime minister Ehud Olmert for then-president George W. Bush during a visit by Bush to Israel and was a key element in convincing the Americans to step up efforts to combat Iran’s nuclear program, the report said.

The report quoted several unnamed Israeli and Middle Eastern intelligence officials, along with recollections from former prime minister Ehud Barak, who was then serving as Olmert’s defense minister.

It said Olmert was so concerned about safeguarding the source of the recording that he refused to play it while anyone else was in the room, including Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert welcomes US President George W. Bush to Israel, at Ben Gurion International Airport on May 14, 2008. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Fakhrizadeh, the scientist said by Israel and the US to head Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, was killed in a military-style ambush last Friday on the outskirts of Tehran. The attack reportedly saw a truck bomb explode and gunmen open fire on Fakhrizadeh.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out the November 27 hit and threatened revenge. Israel, which has been linked to a succession of killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, has not publicly commented on the allegations that it was responsible. It has warned its citizens traveling abroad that they may be targets of Iranian terror attacks in the wake of the killing.

This photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020. (Fars News Agency via AP)

According to the Yedioth report, written by the newspaper’s well-connected investigative reporter Ronen Bergman, Israel had been compiling a dossier on Fakhrizadeh for nearly three decades, long discounting the scientist’s claims that he had nothing to do with any weapons program.

For Israel, the recordings were the final proof that Iran’s nuclear program was not peaceful, as Tehran repeatedly claimed.

Olmert was methodical in the way he revealed the material to Bush, the report said.

The US president had come to Israel in May 2008 as the country marked the 60th anniversary of its founding.

Olmert hosted a dinner at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem and just before dessert, Olmert, Bush, Hadley, and Barak, who was defense minister at the time, headed to a side-room. It was there that Barak asked Bush if the US could supply Israel with a series of weapons it did not have in its arsenal, according to the report. Yedioth said these were believed to be vertical take-off and landing aircraft, along with bunker-busting bombs.

Former National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush Stephen Hadley at the Saban Forum on December 5, 2015 (YouTube screengrab)

Hadley in the previous weeks had been briefing Bush about Israeli desires to carry out a strike against Iran’s nuclear program and Bush immediately understood what Barak wanted the weapons for.

According to Barak, Bush responded to the request by pointing at the defense minister and saying, “This guy frightens me.”

Bush then got to the point. “I want you to know the official position of the United States government. The US strongly opposes Israel taking action against the Iranian nuclear program,” Barak recalled the president replying.

“And in order not to be vague, I will tell you that the United States does not intend to act either as long as I serve as president,” Bush added, according to Barak.

Seemingly expecting the negative response from Bush, Olmert decided he’d make use of the recording the next day when he was meeting the president and Hadley at his office.

US President George W. Bush visits the historical Masada site together with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, May 15, 2008. (Ariel Jerozolimski/Flash90)

According to the report, Olmert asked the national security adviser to leave the room. Hadley insisted on staying, arguing that protocol required him to be present when matters of national security were being discussed.

But Olmert was adamant and Bush assured Hadley it was okay for him to be left alone with the prime minister, the report said.

“I’m going to play you something, but I ask that you not talk about it with anyone, not even with the director of the CIA,” the report quoted Olmert as telling Bush from within the closed-door meeting. Bush reportedly agreed to the request.

Olmert pulled out a recording device, hit play and a man could be heard speaking in Persian.

“The man speaking here is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,” Olmert reportedly explained. “Fakhrizadeh is the head of the “AMAD” program, Iran’s secret military nuclear project. The one it denies exists at all,” Olmert told Bush according to the report.

The prime minister then revealed that Israeli intelligence services had managed to recruit an Iranian agent close to Fakhrizadeh who had been feeding Jerusalem information on the nuclear scientist for years.

Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist who was killed on Friday, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)

Olmert provided Bush with an English-language transcript of what Fakhrizadeh had said in Persian.

According to the report, Fakhrizadeh could be heard giving details about the development of Iranian nuclear weapons. However, the Yedioth report only quotes selected phrases, without the word nuclear. The scientist complains that the government is not providing him with sufficient funds to carry out his work. On the one hand, Fakhrizadeh says, in an apparent reference to his superiors, “they want five warheads,” but on the other, “they aren’t letting me work.”

Fakhrizadeh then goes on to criticize colleagues in the defense ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the report.

Bush read the recording’s translation and reacted with silence. Yedioth claimed the recording served as a “smoking atomic gun” for Olmert.

The premier recognized that Bush would not sell Israel the weapons it was looking for, so he made a new request: full intelligence cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue.

When Bush agreed, Olmert decided to up the ante and proposed that the two carry out joint operations against Iran’s nuclear project, Yedioth said.

This photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020. (Fars News Agency via AP)

The president agreed to this as well, the report said.

Senior officials in Olmert’s office at the time told Yedioth the recording served as a “defining moment” in the two countries’ joint effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

One apparent instance of such cooperation was the Stuxnet computer virus, which was uncovered in 2010 and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. Stuxnet penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges. Up to 1,000 centrifuges out of 5,000 were eventually damaged by the virus, according to reports, setting back the nuclear program.

Yedioth speculated that the Stuxnet plan, called Operation Olympic Games, was born as a result of Olmert’s revelation of the Fakhrizadeh recording to Bush.

However, other reports have said that Bush gave the go-ahead for the operation as early as 2006.

The recording was just one part of the trove of evidence that Israel has gathered on Fakhrizadeh and Iran’s nuclear program over the years, Yedioth noted.

In 2018, the Mossad spirited a huge trove of documentation out of a warehouse in Tehran, detailing Iran’s rogue nuclear program.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who he named as the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, April 30, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in April 2018 that Israel had attained the archive, which he said proved that Iran had lied about not seeking a nuclear weapons arsenal, he specified that Fakhrizadeh oversaw the program and said: “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-tape-of-slain-iran-nuke-chief-talking-about-building-five-warheads/

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A ceremony marks the arrival of the first of four new German-built Saar 6 naval vessels purchased by the Israeli navy, at the naval base in Haifa, on Dec. 2,
2020. Photo by HEIDI LEVINE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.

Source: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/12/israel-missile-ship-boat-vessel-saar-6-iran-gas-sea-dome.html

The post Israel receives advanced warship amid heightened tensions with Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Weapon used in top nuclear scientist’s killing was made in Israel, says Iran’s state TV first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iran’s top nuclear scientist, long identified by U.S. and Israeli intelligence as the guiding figure behind a covert effort to design an atomic warhead, was shot and killed Friday in what Iranian media called a roadside ambush as he and his bodyguards traveled outside Tehran.

For two decades, the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was the driving force behind what U.S. and Israeli officials describe as Iran’s secretive nuclear weapons program. And his work continued after Iran’s push to develop a bomb was formally disbanded in 2003, according to U.S. intelligence assessments and Iranian nuclear documents stolen by Israel nearly three years ago.

One U.S. official — along with two other intelligence officials — said that Israel was behind the attack on the scientist. It was unclear how much the United States may have known about the operation in advance, but the two nations are the closest of allies and have long shared intelligence regarding Iran, which Israel considers its most potent threat.

Iranian officials, who have always maintained that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, not weapons, expressed fury and vowed revenge over the assassination, calling it an act of terrorism and warmongering that they quickly blamed on Israeli assassins and the U.S.

The White House, CIA and Israeli officials declined to comment. But Fakhrizadeh’s assassination — only 10 months after the U.S killed the powerful spymaster at the head of Iran’s security machinery in a drone attack in Iraq — could greatly complicate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s plans to reactivate the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six other nations, which curtailed Iran’s nuclear activities.

Biden’s transition team had no immediate comment on the assassination.

President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear accord in 2018, unraveling the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and isolating the U.S. from Western allies who tried to keep the agreement intact. Since then, Iran has begun to increase its nuclear capacities once again, arguing that it is not bound by the nuclear accord because the U.S. reneged on its commitments.

The assassination of Fakhrizadeh had the hallmarks of a precisely timed operation. Iranian state media said gunmen waited along the road and attacked as his car was driving through the countryside town of Absard, an area known as a bucolic escape with majestic mountains about 65 kilometers east of Tehran.

Pictures posted by state and social media of the attack aftermath showed the scientist’s vehicle, a black SUV, with its windshield shattered from bullets and the side windows blown out. Blood streaks and shards of glass and metal were scattered on the road.

Protests erupted outside government buildings in Tehran to demand revenge, much as they did after the Jan. 3 attack that killed Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general who ran the elite Quds force of the Revolutionary Guard.

“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote on Twitter. “This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”

Prominent Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (right) in an undated photo. | OFFICIAL KHAMENEI WEBSITE / WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY / VIA REUTERS

Zarif, who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and remains one of Iran’s most recognizable figures, said in the post that the international community should “end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff for Iran’s armed forces, said in a statement that “we will not rest until we track down and take revenge on those responsible for the assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh.”

On Friday night, Iran sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, condemning what it called “a terrorist attack” and warning that the country “reserves its rights to take all necessary measures to defend its people and secure its interests.”

It is difficult to predict the precise fallout from the killing. A weakened Iran, having lost two of its most celebrated military and nuclear figures in the last year alone, may be eager for new negotiations with the Biden administration.

Yet the twin assassinations may have poisoned the well. Hard-liners in Iran may win the argument that they cannot bend to outside pressure and should redouble their efforts to resist the West in memory of Fakhrizadeh, who they declared had been martyred.

The former CIA director under Obama, John Brennan, called the killing “a criminal act & highly reckless” in a tweet. “It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict,’’ he wrote, urging Iran to “wait for the return of responsible American leadership” and resist temptations to strike back.

The Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official, Michael P. Mulroy, said the death of Fakhrizadeh was “a setback to Iran’s nuclear program.” He noted that the scientist “was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force.”

It was unclear whether U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the most vocal Iran hawks in the administration, had been given any advance warning of Iran’s plans when he visited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last week.

But some U.S. officials argued that the death of Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a string of such killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists that date back a dozen years, amplifies the chilling message to the country’s other top scientists working on that program: If the well-guarded head cannot be protected, neither can anyone else.

It also remains unclear how much the killing will set back the Iranian program. Fakhrizadeh had the background and oversight to understand the challenges of physics and politics the Iran nuclear program faced.

But Iran recovered from the assassinations of lower-level scientists, and from the cyberattacks from 2007 to 2010 on the nuclear fuel production site at Natanz, a joint Israeli-U.S. operation code-named “Olympic Games.” That operation set Iran back by a year or so.

The killing of Fakhrizadeh comes just two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that al-Qaida’s second-highest leader was gunned down on the streets of Tehran by Israeli assassins on a motorcycle on Aug. 7, at the behest of the United States.

The scene of the attack that killed prominent Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh outside Tehran on Friday | WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY / VIA REUTERS

The al-Qaida figure, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri and was accused of being one of the masterminds of the deadly 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa. He was killed along with his daughter, Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden.

But the al-Qaida official was a foreign national; Fakhrizadeh was a national hero, a figure of resistance to the West and a symbol of its insistence that Iran could not have its own nuclear technology.

Iran never agreed to demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitor, to let U.N. inspectors question Fakhrizadeh, saying he was an academic who lectured at the Imam Hussein University in Tehran.

Fakhrizadeh was an academic, but a series of classified reports, notably a lengthy 2007 assessment done by the CIA for the George W. Bush administration, said the academic role was a cover story. In 2008, his name was added to a list of Iranian officials whose assets were ordered frozen by the U.S.

That same year, his activities were disclosed in an unclassified briefing by the IAEA’s chief inspector. Later, it became clear that he ran what the Iranians called Projects 110 and 111 — an effort to tackle the most difficult problems bomb designers face in creating a warhead small enough to fit atop a missile and make it survive the rigors of re-entry into the atmosphere.

He stayed out of sight for years. But an Israeli operation in early 2018 that stole a warehouse full of Iranian documents about “Project Amad,” what the Iranians called the nuclear weapons effort 20 years ago, included documents about Fakhrizadeh, and at least one handwritten by him, the Israelis contended.

Shortly thereafter, Netanyahu singled out Fakhrizadeh in a televised presentation, when he described the secret Israeli operation to seize the archive. Iran had lied about the purpose of its nuclear research, he charged, and he identified Fakhrizadeh as the leader of the Amad program.

Iran said Netanyahu’s presentation was fiction.

Israeli officials, later backed up by U.S. intelligence officials who reviewed the archive, said the scientist had kept elements of the program alive even after it was ostensibly abandoned. It was now being run covertly, Netanyahu argued, by an organization within Iran’s defense ministry known as SPND. He added: “You will not be surprised to hear that SPND is led by the same person who led Project Amad, Dr. Fakhrizadeh.”

The assassination comes at a time of greatly heightened tensions between Iran and the Trump administration. Trump was dissuaded from striking Iran just two weeks ago, after his aides warned it could escalate into a broader conflict during his last weeks in office.

Trump had asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 12 whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz in the coming weeks. Days later, Pompeo visited Israel on what could be his last trip there in office.

Such a strike on the eve of a new administration could poison relations with Iran to such an extent that negotiating a restoration of the nuclear deal, or toughening its terms, could be impossible.

Since Trump dismissed the secretary of defense, Mark T. Esper, and other top Pentagon aides earlier this month, Defense Department and other national security officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries at the end of his term. Others have said that Netanyahu, who at various moments has been on the edge of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, might seek to act while Trump is still in office.

While Trump’s top advisers — including Pompeo and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — argued against a military strike against Iran, top U.S. officials and commanders still warn of what they call Iran’s malign activities.

In Iran, some officials and commentators acknowledged that Fakhrizadeh’s loss had created a significant void in the country’s pursuit of nuclear science, but vowed that it would not be halted. Others also voiced concern over what apparently was a yawning security hole that they said had allowed Israeli operatives to infiltrate Iran.

“Israel has camped out here in a bad way. The recent events of this year make this clear,” a former vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, said on Twitter. “Iran’s security strategy should be to find Mossad’s spies and informants.”

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/11/28/world/iran-assassination-nuclear-scientist/

The post Gunmen assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist in ambush, provoking new crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iran has vowed it won’t “fall into the trap” of scuppering any future talks with a new U.S. administration following the assassination of a top nuclear scientist.

“Iran’s scientific and defense policies won’t change because of the assassination of one scientist or general,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei said in a statement Sunday posted on the government’s official website. The Islamic Republic “shouldn’t fall into the trap of linking the assassination to past nuclear negotiations,” he said.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a veteran physicist who played a major role in Iran’s nuclear research and defense activities, was killed in a bombing and shooting ambush outside Tehran on Friday. Iran has blamed Israel, which had accused Fakhrizadeh of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb project and hasn’t commented on the allegation.

Underscoring the support for diplomacy, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said while “Iran and the U.S. will continue to have fundamental differences,” the tension between Tehran and Washington needn’t continue after Trump is out of office.

“Under Trump’s presidency, Iran and U.S. tensions rose to a 40-year peak. It seems unnecessary for this situation to continue,” Zarif told the Entekhab news website in an interview on Sunday.

Both Israel and U.S. President Donald Trump oppose President-elect Joe Biden’s intention to rejoin the Obama-era nuclear accord if Tehran — which denies bomb-making ambitions — also returns to full compliance.

Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018 and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, considered attacking the country during his last few weeks in office but was dissuaded by senior aides, the New York Times reported. The killing of Fakhrizadeh, who will be buried in Tehran on Monday, could also complicate a return to the accord.

“This assassination will not remain unanswered, but our response won’t come at a time, place or shape they expect,” Rabiei said, referring to Israel and the U.S. “Iran sets the time and the place.”

Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Adm. Mike Mullen, said the assassination will make it more difficult for Biden to re-enter the nuclear agreement with Iran.

“Fakhrizadeh was at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program,” he said. “Not only the brains but also the passion behind it, so his assassination is really a significant event.”

Mullen added he was hopeful that Biden “can actually reach in and calm the waters, but I think this heightens tension significantly.”

Friday’s incident tops a year of crisis and instability that started with Trump ordering the killing of a top Iranian general in a Jan. 3 drone strike in Baghdad. Iran retaliated with a missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq that didn’t result in any fatalities. But its unintentional downing of a passenger plane above Tehran in the aftermath killed 176 people.

Hard-liners inside Iran are angry at President Hassan Rouhani for trying to keep the 2015 deal alive while attacks continue on Iran. The ultrahard-line Kayhan newspaper, whose editor is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published an opinion piece on Sunday calling for the northern Israeli city of Haifa to be attacked in retaliation.

“Assuming that the role of the Zionist regime in this great martyrdom can be proved, we can operationalize this threat,” the column said. “We should attack the port city of Haifa in such a way that in addition to destroying its facilities, heavy human casualties are also incurred so that our deterrence is optimized.”

The newspaper has made similar calls in the past and, while it reflects the views of the most radical elements of the Islamic Republic, its circulation is relatively small and it doesn’t necessarily represent pragmatists in the government and military.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/11/30/world/iran-us-nuclear-talks/

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