Reply With QuoteIran? What exactly is going on, anyway?
On Friday,the vehicle in which Fakhrizadeh and his wife were travelling came under automatic fire, and a nearby truck exploded.
The killing comes against mounting indications that Trump and Natanyahu are thinking about striking Iran’s nuclear reactor at Natanz.
Meanwhile Mike Pompeo is leading the charge to intensify the application of sanctions on Iran that are designed to be difficult to undo for President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump and his administration are reportedly trying to set so many diplomatic fires that Biden will have a hard time extinguishing all of them. And on Iran, the differences between the two men could not be clearer.
Both are concerned about Iran’s accumulation of nuclear material. But Trump does not want Biden to return to the Iran nuclear deal for which Biden advocated as vice president under Barack Obama.
What does Biden think about this all?
The president-elect’s outlook on Iran is centred on a pledge to return to the nuclear deal struck under the Obama administration, with improvements. As vice president, Biden was a leading salesman for the deal, which traded sanctions relief for rollbacks of Iran’s nuclear programme.
Does Natanyahu really want a war with Israel’s most potent neighbour?
On the one hand, the prime minister is contending with low popularity — so low that he likely would not retain power if elections were held today — and a successful attack against Israel’s most formidable foe could burnish his status among Israelis. Netanyahu also knows that any kind of military strike against Iran will be less likely under Biden, so he may be pressing for intervention now.
The next several days will be pivotal in revealing how far Trump and Netanyahu plan to go at this time — and whether Iran will carry out the retribution for Fakhrizadeh’s murder, which could force their hand. Iran is feeling the economic crunch of sanctions, and the government of President Hassan Rouhani has indicated that it is ready to return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Originally Posted by sinkov
