Kourosh Ziabari – Asia Times: Nearly one week since the high-profile assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on the outskirts of Tehran and the world is waiting to see how Iran’s rulers respond.
While a dramatic retaliatory attack may not be imminent, newly tabled legislation promises to accelerate Iran’s nuclear program in defiance of the assassination’s apparent aim of curtailing its progress and perceived threat.
Fakhrizadeh, a brigadier general with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a key figure in Iran’s nuclear program was ambushed and killed on November 27 in what many observers have described as an “extraterritorial targeted killing.”
Iranian authorities have reflexively blamed the attack on Israel, a narrative that has been bolstered by a New York Times report quoting an anonymous Israeli politician saying the world should “thank” Israel for the scientist’s killing.
President Hassan Rouhani’s government has so far sought to ease public outrage, with the leader saying the nation is too prudent to fall in a well-laid enemy trap. That appears to signal that Iran will not escalate the situation through reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict and pull the US into the battle before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
Iranian hardliners, however, are leveraging the attack to advance a myopic political agenda. Iranian state TV, dominated by hardline white-collars, rearguard pundits and diehard anti-Western hosts has aired a farrago of programs lashing out at the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement and lambasting Rouhani’s administration for his overtures to the West.
Significantly, Fakhrizadeh was honored by President Rouhani in February 2016 for his role in securing the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Now, Rouhani’s critics have gone so far as to inculpate him and his team as de facto responsible for Fakhrizadeh’s killing.
Others are calling for fiery revenge against Israel. Kayhan, Iran’s most conservative newspaper, even suggested in an op-ed that Iran should launch a retaliatory strike on Israel’s Port of Haifa, saying such an attack was necessary for “deterrence.”
As calls mount for revenge, the most radical action taken so far has been in Iran’s parliament, known as the Majlis. On Wednesday, lawmakers passed a “double-urgency” bill obliging the government to halt within two months the implementation of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Additional Protocol for verification of nuclear safeguards.
The protocol grants the UN’s nuclear watchdog “expanded rights of access to information and locations” in signatory states. Iran had agreed in the JCPOA to provisionally apply the IAEA’s additional protocol as of January 16, 2016, known as the accord’s “implementation day.”
The Majlis bill, apart from curtailing IAEA inspectors’ access to nuclear sites, also requires the government to stockpile 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to the purity of 20% annually, which is still below the level required for producing nuclear weapons but remarkably higher than the threshold set in the JCPOA.
Iran had earlier committed to keeping the level of its uranium enrichment to 3.67% for 15 years since the JCPOA’s implementation.
The parliamentary motion, unprecedented in its legislating of exact details of the country’s nuclear activities, demands the installation of a new generation of Iranian-manufactured centrifuges, called IR-2m and IR-6, at facilities in Natanz and Fordow, the latter an underground site. The legislation also mandates the construction of a new heavy water reactor.
Although unconventional for a Majlis bill, the plan has been quickly certified by the influential Guardian Council following submission by the parliament. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, meanwhile, has presented it to President Rouhani as a law to be enacted.
The legislation provides for relevant authorities in executive bodies who refrain from implementing the terms of the bill or block its enforcement can be punished with up to 25 years in prison.