Page 8 - IRANRptDec20

claim was almost certainly deployed by Israel—​assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist​ Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in a covert operation in a town 40 miles east of Tehran. Responding to the killing, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on November 28 that Iran’s immediate priority was the “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it”. He did not elaborate.
Referring to the January killing of Soleimani—in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport personally authorised by Trump and described by a UN special rapporteur as a breach of international law—Tehran prosecutor general Ali Alqasi-Mehr reportedly said: “Thirty six individuals who cooperated, collaborated and participated in the assassination of Hajj Qasem, including political and military authorities of the US and other countries, have been identified.”
The ​Tehran Times​ quoted prosecutors as saying that the Iranian judiciary has formed a committee to track down those who were behind the killing of Soleimani, who was the de facto head of Iran’s armed forces and the country’s second most important official.
In further remarks on the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on November 28 blamed Israel and reiterated that Fakhrizadeh’s death would not halt the country’s nuclear development programme, which Iran claims is non-military and focused on energy.
“We will respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time,” Rouhani said, indicating it could be days or weeks before a retalitation.
John Brennan, a former head of the CIA under Trump’s predecessor as US president Barack Obama, called the assassination “a criminal act and highly reckless”. “Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage and to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits,” he tweeted.
If Iran hits back over the Fakhrizadeh assassination, US President-elect Joe Biden’s hopes of engaging Tehran with diplomacy and calming Middle East tensions could be wrecked.
A retaliation could also give Trump an excuse to hit Iran with overt or covert military action in a move to secure a foreign policy win before his term of power is up. His policy of attempting to diminish Iran as a force in the Middle East with crushing sanctions is widely seen as having failed given that it has hurt ordinary Iranians while leaving the ruling regime intact and untouched.
2.5​ ​Rouhani optimistic about US relations with Iran, Americans “ridden of this evil” Trump
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, on November 25 told his weekly cabinet that in his eyes it would be easy to solve the country’s problems with the US so long as incoming president Joe Biden sticks with the commitments he made on the campaign trail.
In a scathing put-down of US President Donald Trump, Rouhani said: “The
8​ IRAN Country Report December 2020 www.intellinews.com