"Fakhrizadeh’s death is indeed a heavy blow for the nuclear program, but it will go on”
Last week’s hit on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Iranian nuclear program — widely attributed to Israeli covert action — takes up where an assassination program of Iranian nuclear scientists left off almost a decade ago. What’s the message behind this latest strike?
Amnon Sofrin, former head of the intelligence directorate in the Mossad, told me this week how indispensable for the nuclear program Fakhrizadeh was. “He was with the project from day one, and he was one of the few who understood the full picture and saw how the different elements of the plan came together.”
A figure in the Israeli intelligence community tells Mishpacha: “The struggle is becoming more intense because someone wants to send Iran a message that the game isn’t over, and make it much harder for Biden to negotiate with them. This blow leaves the Iranians hard hit, they’re bruised and battered and desperate to regain their honor. Finding a replacement for Fakhrizadeh won’t be easy.”
I asked him if there was any connection between Fakhrizadeh’s elimination and the assassination of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Muhammad al-Masri in Tehran three weeks ago, which was widely attributed to Israel. Al-Masri’s elimination took place on August 7, the 22nd anniversary of the 1998 terror attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which he helped mastermind. He was gunned down by a pair of assassins on bikes in the streets of Tehran.
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