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The Mohsen Fakhrizadeh bombing marks a new climax in a secret war. Much now depends on the course of future US President Biden and the days left to Trump.
Two presidents burn: protests yesterday in Tehran.
Photo: Reuters
The year began with thunder in the Middle East: on January 3, an American drone killed Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards general commanded the Quds Brigades, the unit responsible for the regime’s foreign operations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, as well as terrorist attacks in other countries. The year ends with the death of an equally important revolutionary guardian: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Soleimani was the architect of the Iranian strategy of waging a shadow war in the region with the help of allied militias, especially in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but increasingly also in Yemen. He was the mastermind behind the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States.
Maximum pressure, maximum resistance
It is the driving force behind Tehran’s increasingly aggressive reaction to Donald Trump’s exit from the nuclear deal in May 2018 and the “maximum pressure campaign” with drastic tightening of US oil and financial sanctions. The Tehran regime called its response a “campaign of maximum resistance”.
Fakhrizadeh described Western intelligence agents as the “father of the Iranian bomb” or Oppenheimer of Tehran, a reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the development of the first nuclear weapons in the United States during World War II as part of the secret Manhattan project. According to the Tehran government, Fakhrizadeh was the victim of an attack on his car on Friday. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), since the late 1980s he has been in charge of various projects that are “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” – a very cautious description of the army’s nuclear program. .
Mysterious explosions and suspected sabotage
The killings of these two prominent figures of the Iranian regime show Iran’s vulnerability, but are only the macabre culmination of a secret war in the region, fueled again by the assassination. The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday called for a “determined punishment” for the perpetrators and those who follow them. President Hassan Rohani announced that the Iranian nation would react to Fakhrizadeh’s death “in due course” and would not fall in love with the “Zionist conspiracy”. As Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Sarif, who spoke of “state terrorism”, blamed Israel.
Absard’s crime scene is located about 50 kilometers east of Tehran. Here Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was fatally wounded in an attack.
Photo: Fars News Agency / Keystone
There had already been a series of mysterious explosions in Iran over the summer, which can most plausibly be explained as sabotage by the secret services. In June, a building related to the ballistic missile construction program was blown up at the Parchin military base near the capital. The Iranians have spoken of a “gas explosion” and American and Israeli intelligence officials have denied having anything to do with it.
A few days later, an explosion at the site of the Natans uranium enrichment plant destroyed a room where Iranian scientists were working on developing new and more powerful gas centrifuges. With these machines, the isotope 235 of fissile uranium can be concentrated: for the fuel rods of power plants up to 3-5%, for nuclear weapons over 90%. The Iranian government soon spoke of sabotage itself.
Iran relies on asymmetric attacks
Meanwhile, Iran is trying to use Revolutionary Guards-controlled or supported militias to attack American targets in the region, to target Israel or US Arab allies, especially Saudi Arabia. It was only on Tuesday that Yemen’s Houthi militias launched a kind of cruise missile at the oil facilities of the Saudi state company Aramco near Jeddah. Riyadh responded on Friday with heavy airstrikes on Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
As with the drone and cruise missile attack on Aramco in Abqaiq and Khurais in September 2019, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, the weapon is likely to have been built with Iranian help if not Revolutionary guards controlled its use. On Wednesday, a tanker stumbled upon a Red Sea mine off the Saudi coast – an incident reminiscent of similar acts of sabotage in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman that heightened tensions last year. The United States and other Western countries have also seen the Revolutionary Guards work here.
Air strikes on targets in Lebanon and Syria
The Israeli Air Force bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in July and August after military officials said there were attempts to infiltrate the border area to attack Israeli soldiers and a firefight in the second incident. Israeli fighters regularly attack Revolutionary Guard facilities in Syria; In the past week alone, they have carried out three waves of attacks on targets near Damascus and Albu Kamal, on the border with Iraq. More than 20 militiamen are said to have been killed as well as officers of the guards.
This shadow war has now returned to a point where it could turn into an open military conflict. After Soleimani’s killing, Iran was content with a missile strike on a US base in Iraq, which had mainly a symbolic effect. Shortly thereafter, however, the Revolutionary Guards shot down a passenger plane with more than 180 occupants near Tehran because they expected a US attack.
The Iranian leadership has reasons to wait for the handover to Washington and to hope for a better relationship under new president Joe Biden. On Wednesday, President Rohani was confident that problems with the United States under Biden would be “easy to fix” if he kept his campaign promises and brought the United States to the nuclear deal. However, Tehran’s hardliners do not want to come to an understanding with the United States, but rather expel them from the region. Also, Donald Trump will be in office for more than 50 days – and it is fully open what will happen until then.
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