Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, specializing in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Articles & Testimony
The operation’s professionalism and complexity suggest the involvement of Israeli personnel; either way, an Iranian security clampdown is inevitable.
Speculation about President Trump using his last weeks in office to lash out at Iran’s nuclear project missed the bigger story—that Israel would use the window of political opportunity to take action which might be hard to get away with under a Biden administration. On a dusty road east of Tehran, in the shadow of the quiescent, snow-capped Damavand volcano, Fakhrizadeh’s car was ambushed. We await fuller details but photos published on Twitter suggest there were no survivors in his car. Another vehicle appears to have been completely destroyed by a bomb. Israel, it seems, is back to its policy from 2010 to 2012 of assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists, suspended under pressure from the Obama administration so that Iran would agree to being a party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action...