Why Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed now

Yesterday afternoon someone assassinated yet another scientist working on Iran’s nuclear programme. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh headed up the ministry of defence’s research and innovation organisation, and he was ambushed and killed in his car just east of Tehran, by gunmen who opened fire on him and his bodyguards.

I’ve been writing about Iranian nuclear scientists getting whacked for almost a decade now, with my book on Iran’s nuclear programme published in an updated edition this month. It appears that another cycle of nuclear violence is starting once again – and Fakhrizadeh is the most important hit yet. He genuinely was at the heart of the Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Indeed, in 2018 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled him out in a public presentation on Iran’s nuclear programme. ‘Remember that name,’ he told his audience. An injunction someone clearly took to heart. The Americans, too, had Fakhrizadeh’s number. In 2015 the New York Times described