Four weeks after Biden announced his intent to return to the JCPOA, rumors have been circulating that the Trump administration might use its final weeks in office to create roadblocks to the US rejoining the nuclear deal. On November 27th, a major roadblock emerged. The alleged former head of Iran’s nuclear weapons research program, nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated on the streets of a suburb of Tehran.
While nobody is claiming responsibility, most experts attribute this action to Israel (possibly with intelligence support from the US), which carried out a campaign to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists several years ago. This comes on the heels of an assassination on August 7th of Al Qaeda’s third-in-command living under cover in Iran, and the US’s drone strike assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp general Qassem Solemani in Baghdad in January.
Iran’s theocratic hardliners generally loathe the idea of negotiations with the US, but were brought to the table under economic duress last time around. With the assassination of a prominent nuclear scientist, it is less likely that the few moderates that exist in Iran’s foreign policy establishment will be able to push the regime to renegotiate the JCPOA, which would have to include some concessions from Iran.