Was Iran’s Fakhrizadeh an Oppenheimer or a Soleimani?

The killing of Iranian Islamist Revolutionary Guard Corps general and scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has led to a storm of condemnation. It is not clear who killed him, but many US experts, former officials and voices in the European Union feel the attack was unacceptable.  Fakhrizadeh has been in the limelight for years. In 2011 a UN nuclear watchdog report spotlighted him as key to Iran’s nuclear program. In 2015 the New York Times compared him to the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. At the same time video has emerged of Fakhrizadeh with IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani. Other sources have pointed to Fakhrizadeh as being a Brig. Gen. in the IRGC. He worked in the Defense Ministry as head of the research and innovation organization, reports say. Israel said that Iranian secret archives illustrated that Fakhrizadeh was head of Project Amad and headed SPND inside the Defense Ministry.  According to Reuters in 2019 the US had sanctioned the SPND, “which oversees nuclear-relevant research.” Fakhrizadeh had already been sanctioned in 2008.  However, the spotlight on this man who was at the nexus of Iran’s military industrial nuclear complex, was not seen as a carte blanche for his assassination. Former US Ambassador Michael McFaul wrote that assassinations should not be an instrument of foreign policy. “It’s immoral,” he tweeted. He also said it produced “tit-for-tat responses” and does not achieve long-term objectives.Former CIA head John Brennan said the killing of Fakhrizadeh was a “criminal act” and that it was reckless and would rick “lethal retaliation” and a “new round of regional conflict.” He also wrote that “such an act of state-sponsored terrorism” was a violation of international law. He contrasted it with US assassinations of terrorist leaders who are “not sovereign states” and are illegitimate combatants. Former Obama administration advisor Ben Rhodes also condemned the “outrageous action” that would undermine diplomacy. The European Union foreign policy body also condemned the assassination. It said t was a “criminal act” and ran counter to human rights. The list of condemnations presents Fakhrizadeh as a scientist of a sovereign country, not a legitimate target within the military apparatus of a regime that has threatened its neighbors and the region with missiles and possible nuclear weapons. Iran in recent years has mined ships illegally in the Gulf of Oman, fired rockets at Kurdish dissidents in 2018 in Iraq, used drones and missiles to attack Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq in 2019, and also sent ballistic missiles to Iraq, air defense, drones and missiles to Syria and to Hezbollah’s illegal arms depots in Lebanon and Iran has carried out a campaign of assassinations in Europe since the 1980s, as well as empowering terror groups to attack targets in Bulgaria, Argentina, Thailand and elsewhere.  

The question about Fakhrizadeh was whether he was primarily a scientist, like Oppenheimer, or more of a general in the defense ministry overseeing key aspects of the military nuclear program. Oppenheimer was born in 1904 and received his PhD in 1927. Later Oppenheimer led research for the National Defense Research Committee and then for the US Army’s Office of Scientific Research and Development, with the aim of building a nuclear bomb. Oppenheimer was known for his left-leaning political views and later in life would struggle for arms control against nuclear proliferation. He came to oppose the thing he had helped create. There is no evidence that Fakhrizadeh or those around him have the same desire for peace that Oppenheimer had. It’s also not clear why some who condemned the killing of Fakhrizadeh did not condemn similar assassinations in 2012 of Iranian scientists. Lastly, it is not clear if US enemies had targeted Oppenheimer, whether that would have been outside the bounds of the conflict, since the scientists were engaged in a military project. The problem for Iran’s regime is that one the one hand it wants its scientists to be above reproach regarding Iran’s open claims that it will destroy Israel and bring “death to America.” The regime wants to demand “death” on one end, and invade and assassinate people in other countries, but also does not want that to happen inside Iran.  Fakhrizadeh does not appear to have been an Oppenheimer type. He was more like a Soleimani, a key military figure at the heart of the military industrial nuclear complex of Iran and Iran’s threats against the region. Iran has built increasingly precise missiles, with longer ranges. It has also built more drones. Iran is seeking to present a real threat to its neighbors and the region and continues to warn the US and others of “revenge.” 
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