Fingers point to Israel's responsibility for his death
The assassination of Colonel Khodaei in Iran aims to sabotage the nuclear agreement
Fisherman's funeral in Tehran.
Reuters
Colonel Khodaei was killed for sabotaging the American diplomatic movement with Tehran.
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No party has claimed responsibility for the recent assassination of an Iranian official, but if the press's speculation referring to Israel is correct, what are the motives and goals behind this action?
What we do know is that a senior official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was shot and killed, while he was in his car in front of his home in Tehran, by unidentified gunmen riding a motorbike.
We are aware that few countries have the incentive and capabilities to carry out assassinations in Iran, and that Israel, perhaps by employing members of the People's Mojahedin Group as its agents, has assassinated a number of Iranian scientists in the same way in the past, according to what the Washington Post reported.
Relationship
Iran's accusation of Israel's responsibility for the killing, in addition to the daring method of killing, raised the possibility of a relationship between the recent killing and previous killings in Iran that were attributed to Israel, which targeted nuclear scientists.
The last significant killing attributed to Israel was the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the atomic energy program, in November 2020, two months before the entry of US President Joe Biden to the White House, who promised during his election campaign to return the United States to the Iranian nuclear agreement signed in 2015, which Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it.
According to later press accounts, Israel or its agents targeted Fakhrizadeh using a remote-controlled smart robot, which was smuggled into Iran in several parts, and then assembled there.
The assassinations failed to achieve their goal
If these assassinations were primarily aimed at impeding progress in the Iranian nuclear program, then they have proven to be largely unsuccessful. After each assassination, the pace of development of the Iranian nuclear program has accelerated, to the point where it has now reached a point where Iran has the enriched uranium for a bomb. One or two nuclear weapons within two weeks, if you really decide to do so, according to most experts.
Although these assassinations seemed unrelated to the progress of the nuclear program, except for what so far appears to have provided the impetus to accelerate the pace of work on the program, they coincided with the periods during which the United States and Iran were close to achieving a diplomatic breakthrough.
condemnation
In fact, former President Barack Obama's team condemned the assassinations carried out by Israel, because they were aware that the killings would not impede the Iranian nuclear program, and that their sole objective was to obstruct the diplomatic process.
The assassination of a scholar in 2012, just as the Obama administration was quietly moving toward negotiations that culminated in an agreement dubbed the “Comprehensive Joint Action Plan” drew exceptionally strong condemnations from senior US officials.
Perhaps the identity of the recent assassination victim in Iran gives us evidence of his possible target. The victim is Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a colonel in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the same organization that was included on the list of terrorist groups during the era of President Trump, and it constitutes the last sticking point preventing the return of The United States to the Iran nuclear agreement.
Biden still refuses
Although Biden's team knows, and previously admitted, that keeping the IRGC on the terrorist list does not benefit Washington's interests in curbing Iran's nuclear program, and that the administration of former President Donald Trump put him on the list to make returning to the Iran nuclear agreement more politically difficult for No president succeeds him, but Biden has so far refused to remove him from this list.
There are reports that Tehran may be open to conceding to the issue of removing the Revolutionary Guards from the terrorist list as a condition in order to return to the nuclear agreement's restrictions on uranium enrichment, in addition to other key provisions.
The foreign minister of Qatar, who is mediating between Tehran and Washington, said the same thing a few days ago. Is there an imminent potential breakthrough?
And if Israel was responsible for the killing, was that why it targeted a Revolutionary Guards officer rather than a nuclear scientist?
Have you come to the conclusion that killing an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards could provoke the Revolutionary Guards and the hardliners in Iran, making concessions on their part difficult to achieve?
legal issue
This would certainly fit in with previous patterns, in which killings perpetrated by Israel were timed to sabotage US diplomacy with Iran.
Iran considers that the issue of removing the Revolutionary Guards from the terrorist list is an important issue, because it makes killing members of the Revolutionary Guards a legal matter, under US law.
We do not know if Israel was behind this killing or not.
But if it was really responsible for it, it did so in order to eliminate any possibility of making concessions regarding the status of the Revolutionary Guards between Washington and Tehran, and it also shows the failure of Biden's strategy in seeking to placate Israel so far at the time of its sabotage of American diplomacy.
Trita Parsi is a writer and expert on Iran-US relations
If Israel was indeed responsible for Khodaei's assassination, it did so in order to eliminate any possibility of concessions regarding the status of the Revolutionary Guards between Washington and Tehran. After each assassination, the pace of development of Iran's nuclear program has accelerated, to the point that it has now reached the point where Iran will have the enriched uranium it has for a nuclear bomb or two within two weeks, if it really decides to do so.
Iran's accusation of Israel's responsibility for the killing, in addition to the daring method of killing, raised the possibility of a relationship between the recent killing case and previous killings in Iran attributed to Israel, which targeted nuclear scientists.
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