The public demonstrative assassination of Iranian nuclear program curator Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, committed in Tehran province on Friday, set off an irreversible chain of events.

Despite the fact that the first reactions of Iranian officials to the incident were the immediate accusation of the Mossad in the elimination of Fahrizade, there is no conclusive evidence that the murder was carried out by the hands of the Israelis.

The only circumstantial evidence is Benjamin Netanyahu's Friday conference, in which he listed a list of the goals he had achieved in a week, with a charmingly ominous smile: “But this is an incomplete list, unfortunately, I cannot tell you everything.”

Israel's desire to boast of such an operation is understandable.

And it is logical that Israel looks like the main interest.

But it's worth looking into.

The assassination of Fakhrizade, the curator of the nuclear program, sparked an outcry in Tehran and prompted lawmakers to speed up the process of passing a bill that ... will significantly expand Iran's nuclear activities.

Yes, you heard right.

On Sunday, November 29, the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) held an emergency and closed meeting dedicated to the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.

If you thought that it was an internal investigation of what happened and heads flew, then you are deeply mistaken.

The Ministry of Defense, where Fakhrizadeh headed the research department, received a doubled budget "to continue the cause of the great martyr."

The same thing happened after the death of General Soleimani: Ayatollah Khamenei gave the IRGC and Al-Quds $ 200 million - well, something like moral compensation.

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But this is not the main thing.

The main thing is the ratification of the draft law called "Strategic measures to lift sanctions."

Representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the Central Bank and the Minister of Intelligence, Mahmoud Allawi, came to the Mejlis for his admission.

As a double-urgency proposal, it was ratified by 232 votes from 246 MPs present at the meeting.

And here is what was adopted:


- resumption of 20% uranium enrichment;


- increased use of IR6 IR8 centrifuges;


- limitation of IAEA inspections;


- the return of the 40 MW heavy water reactor in Arak to the state prior to the conclusion of the JCPOA by revitalizing the heart of the reactor.

According to this bill, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will be required to produce and store at least 120 kg of enriched uranium with a 20% purity level at the nuclear facility in Fordow annually.

Fereydun Abbasi-Davani, head of the parliamentary committee on energy, said that "Fakhrizade's martyrdom will change the parliament's approach to the nuclear issue."

Abbasi-Davani himself was the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran from February 2011 to August 2013, and in 2010 he survived an assassination attempt in northern Tehran.

He has a PhD in nuclear physics and is full of nuclear enthusiasm (for those who seriously believed that the elimination of Fakhrizadeh would make Iran intimidated and curtail the program).

“Right now, the Majlis will focus on four issues that I will deal with personally.


1. Start of 20% uranium enrichment;


2. Expulsion of all inspectors of the Agency (IAEA. -

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3. Termination of any cooperation with the Agency;


4. Withdrawal from the JCPOA (Iran's 2015 nuclear deal) ”- said Abbasi-Davani.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf called the bill "a response to the assassination of Fahrizade."

But now there will be an extremely interesting moment: the project of this "nuclear expansion" lay in parliament since the first days of November and was moving forward slowly.

After the death of Fakhrizadeh, due to the urgency, he was quickly adopted by 2/3 of the parliament, as 1/3 of the parliament was absent due to restrictions on COVID-19.

Speaker Ghalibaf: “If oil exports and banking ties between Iran and Europe are not normalized within three months after the adoption of the bill, the government will be forced to end the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol” (access of international inspectors to nuclear facilities. - 

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.).

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Javad Karimi Koddusi, a senior member of the parliamentary commission on national security and foreign policy: "Iran must immediately withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."

That is, in the last two months of Trump's rule, when the danger of a military strike on the country is great as never before, the conservatives begin to raise rates to the maximum, actually arrange a high-speed nuclear race, inflating the pace of thermal and political reactions.

This is despite the fact that the reserves of enriched uranium in Iran today are 2,442.9 kg, which is 12 times the permitted limit.

How can this be explained?

I think the point is in the exacerbation of the internal political struggle in Iran itself.

After two terms of Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Zarif, bringing their country a nuclear deal with the United States and the lifting of sanctions in 2015, the Conservatives were to come to power in the 2021 cycle.

The Iranian political elite most likely expected Trump to win in November 2020 (according to the logic that Trump is strong, popular, and the usual "4 + 4" scheme, two consecutive terms in Iran itself, should have worked).

Under Trump, a "conservative" candidate for the presidential election has already been selected.

And suddenly - Biden's victory.

This victory opens up the possibility of a new deal for Iran, and one of the first actions that Biden takes after the announcement of the results is to call French President Macron and notify him that the US will return to the nuclear deal destroyed by Trump.

Ayatollah Khamenei is a great pragmatist who can easily replay the internal alignment and rearrange the pieces on the chessboard, giving the Iranian liberals an opportunity to negotiate with Biden again and lift the sanctions that killed the economy.

With Biden's victory at the Iranian presidential finish line, the figure of Javad Zarif, who has exceptional relations with the US Democratic Party - with Biden, and with Obama, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, began to clearly emerge.

Iranian media even ran a duck that Zarif's son was present at the wedding of Kerry's daughter, highlighting the warm friendship between the two families.

Both sides have denied this, but Kerry's daughter is married to an ethnic Iranian from that "opposition" liberal Iranian group.

The success of the "reformers" will severely undermine the positions of the IRGC and militant supporters of clericalism.

Therefore, we see that on the rostrum of the parliament - one of the most ardent lobbyists for nuclear expansion, cleric and IRGC member Mojtaba Zonnur, chairman of the commission on national security and foreign policy, who, right from there, from the rostrum of parliament, in front of television cameras, threatened the president of the country with hanging.

Yes, this is not for you to splash with orange juice, this is the Iranian parliament in its hard version, where they are fighting for power in earnest and to the death.

Fakhrizade's assassination cannot stop Iran's nuclear program.

We see this from Tehran's lightning-fast response.

And we see that the initiative for nuclear expansion comes precisely from the Conservatives, who at the beginning of 2020 took parliament with an absolute majority.

The final answer lies with Ayatollah Khamenei, but it is already clear that the conservatives will push him to fight.

For now, we can say that nuclear expansion is just a gift to the 45th US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, for whom this is quite a reason to strike at Iran.

Even European politicians who support Iran will find it difficult to find counterarguments against the nuclear blackmail that Tehran is choosing today.

“The ability to quickly move forces into, out of and around the theater to seize, retain and exploit the initiative is key to deterring potential aggression."


- Lt. Gen. Greg Guillot, US AFCENT commander. @ USAFCENT # WinToday # AirPowerhttps: //t.co/bwWD8cse6Npic.twitter.com/4kuACwal4M

- US Central Command (@CENTCOM) November 21, 2020

Let me remind you that on November 22, it became known that Trump sent B-52H Stratofortress bombers to the Middle East from the Minot base in North Dakota, the only US Air Force base that has a fleet of bombers capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Buckle up, gentlemen, it'll be hot.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.