Iranian scientist killed, adding a challenge for Biden

An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb program was killed in an ambush near Tehran Friday that could provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Iranian state media said died in hospital after armed assassins gunned him down in his car, will also complicate any effort by U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to revive the detente of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Iran pointed the finger at Israel, with the implication that the killing would have the blessing of the departing Mr. Trump.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted of “serious indications of Israeli role” and called on Western countries to “end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”

The military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to “strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr.”

“In the last days of the political life of their ... ally [Mr. Trump], the Zionists seek to intensify pressure on Iran and create a full-blown war,” Hossein Dehghan tweeted.

There was silence from foreign capitals. Israel declined to comment. In the United States, the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and CIA all declined to comment. Mr. Biden’s transition team also declined to comment.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh has been described by Western and Israeli intelligence services for years as the leader of a covert atomic bomb program halted in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of trying to restore in secret. Iran has long denied seeking to weaponize nuclear energy.

The semi-official news agency Tasnim said “terrorists blew up another car” before firing on a vehicle carrying Mr. Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards in an ambush outside the capital.

The nuclear deal

Regardless of who was responsible for the attack, it is certain to escalate tension between Iran and the United States in the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

President Trump, who lost his reelection bid to Mr. Biden Nov. 3 and leaves office Jan. 20, pulled the United States from a deal reached under Mr. Obama, his predecessor, by which sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

President-elect Biden has said he will aim to restore that agreement, although many analysts say this would not happen overnight, with both sides likely to demand more reassurances.

A U.S. official confirmed this month that Mr. Trump had asked military aides for a plan for a possible strike on Iran. The president decided against it at the time because of the risk it could provoke a wider Middle East conflict.

Last January, Mr. Trump ordered a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq, the closest the two foes have come to war in decades.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh is thought to have headed what the U.N. nuclear watchdog and U.S. intelligence services believe was a coordinated nuclear weapons program in Iran, shelved in 2003.

He was the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran‘s nuclear program. The IAEA’s report said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran‘s) nuclear program.”

‘Remember that name’

The scientist was a central figure in a presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons.

“Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the time.

During the final months of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Israel has been making peace with Gulf Arab states that share its hostility toward Iran.

This week, the Israeli leader traveled to Saudi Arabia and met its crown prince, an Israeli official said, in what would be the first publicly confirmed visit by an Israeli leader. Israeli media said they were joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

On Friday, before the news of the attack on the Iranian scientist emerged, an Israeli official said Israel was discussing with Gulf Arab states how to tackle Iran.

“The story is not Trump, nor even Israel. The story is Iran – the growing dread that a new U.S. administration will go back to the nuclear deal which threatens the very existence of the Gulf countries,” Tzachi Hanegbi, who sits in Mr. Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM.

“We will know how to handle the issue of the Iranian threat, even if through our own means.”