Thread by @AliVaez

1/ Iran has begun commemorating the 1st anniversary of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's killing. 

I think there's a strong argument to be made that after Trump's 2018 JCPOA withdrawal, this is the single most important and consequential event in the current nuclear crisis [thread]

2/ @ronenbergman & @farnazfassihi did a deep dive into the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist earlier this year that gets into the why/how of what happened that Fri in Absard. 👇 Long in Israeli crosshairs for his work on Iran's nuclear program.

https://twitter.com/ronenbergman/status/1439157190250618885

3/ The Trump admin and Netanyahu government had for several months been discussing the revival of sabotage operations and killing nuclear experts. The then-director of Mossad proposed killing Fakhriazdeh as one option, and Trump admin officials briefed on the idea backed it.

4/ By mid-2020, with U.S. elections on the horizon, time was running short. Per the NYT report, "in Mr Netanyahu's best-case scenario, the assassination would detail any change of resurrecting the nuclear agreement even if Mr Biden won".

5/ Ronen & Farnaz's piece goes on to tell the "straight-out-science-fiction story" of the assassination itself. But where the story ends is where its implications begin.

For months, Iranian conservatives have been agitating for the Rouhani admin to expand nuclear activity.

6/ After the assassination, those calls - manifested in a parliamentary bill rapidly greenlit despite the Rouhani admin arguing it was "detrimental to the process of diplomatic activities" - were adopted. It's a blueprint for nearly everything Tehran has done since.

7/ As a European non-proliferation official told us a few months back, Tehran's "told us what they're going to do, done it, then told us they'd done it". Case in point: Iran was enriching at 4.5% this time last year, per the Majlis law that was raised to 20% at start of Jan.

8/ Incidentally, the cycle of sabotage and escalation was also on display in April when Iran announced it was raising enrichment levels again just 48 hours after an attack at the Natanz facility - to an unprecedented 60%.

9/ As @nytimes reported last week, debates ongoing re benefits of sabotage & killing: Attacks yielding limited returns on stopping nuclear advances, and in fact may backfire. In Fakhrizadeh's case, loss of research knowledge could be long-term setback for weapon development.

10/10 In the recent past and near present, however, it should be clear that the covert campaign is a mirror image of the Trump sanctions campaign: Tactically effective, yet strategically delivering the exact opposite of what its stated goals.