The pressure in Iran for a kinetic type of retaliation in response to the Nov. 27 killing of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is building. There are also many actions that Iran could take short of kinetic response–such as a missile attack directed at the U.S. military in the region or against Israel. Other measures could have even broader implications.
A bill has been tendered in the Iranian parliament calling for “strategic action” for lifting of the sanctions after the failure of the JCPOA’s European parties to fulfill Tehran’s interests and in the wake of assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Tasnim reports this morning. The motion got 232 votes out of 246 MPs attending. The bill’s sponsors said that the sanctions were to have been removed under the JCPOA, but were reimposed by the U.S. The bill contains a combination of suggestions about Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a revision of measures regarding the JCPOA. The bill also cites the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3.
The bill calls for Iran to increase its production of enriched uranium, including uranium enriched to a level that would not have been allowed under the JCPOA.
Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf called for a harsh response to the assassination: “The criminal enemy will not regret [its move] unless there is a strong reaction [from Iran] that would both create deterrence against the enemy’s possible future mistakes and take revenge on them for this crime.”
On Nov. 28, the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission spokesman Abolfazl Amouei said that Iran must reduce IAEA’s inspections of its nuclear facilities to a minimum.
Another member of parliament, Nasrollah Pezhmanfar, wrote yesterday: “A statement condemning the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will be read out in an open session of Parliament tomorrow, obligating the government to retaliate quickly against U.S. and Israeli terrorist leaders and to reduce the level of IAEA spy inspections of nuclear and military facilities to zero.”
The hardline Iranian newspaper Kayhan reportedly published an editorial this morning calling for an Iranian attack on the Israeli port city of Haifa in retaliation for Fakhrizadeh’s killing. The Nov. 29 piece called for an assault that destroys facilities and “also causes heavy human casualties,” reported AP.
The author of the piece, Iranian analyst Sadollah Zarei, called for an assault on Haifa greater than Iran’s ballistic missile attack against American troops in Iraq following the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Soleimani in January.
Some hard-liners argued that the killing of Fakhrizadeh showed that Tehran should give up on holding out for a new start with Mr. Biden, if only because restraint was emboldening its foes. “If you don’t respond to this level of terrorism, they may repeat it because now they know Iran won’t react,” the conservative political analyst Foad Izadi told the New York Times yesterday in an interview from Tehran. “There is obviously a problem when you see these types of things repeating.”
Hard-liners blamed the administration of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani — a pragmatist who had bet heavily on negotiations with Washington — for the security failures that allowed the attack. “The night is long and we are awake,” said Hossein Dehghan, a recently announced candidate in next year’s presidential election who is a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards and the defense adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “We will come down like thunder on the heads of those responsible for the murder of this martyr and make them regret it,” he continued in a message on Twitter.
