The Assassination of Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientist

ELLIE GERANMAYEH, EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, look, this was an ambush against a top Iranian nuclear scientist, but, in my view, the main target of that was the heart of diplomatic efforts that many expect will be under way between the next U.S. administration under Joe Biden and Iran. And I think this has been a very calculated move that has been in the pipeline for years, really, by proponents of President Trump’s so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran, to use the very last weeks — we’re talking about two more months of the Trump administration — to serve of the final blows for any hopes for diplomacy between Iran and the United States. And I think we need to buckle up for a very turbulent few weeks ahead.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, what do you mean? I mean, what do you think might happen? There are all sorts of reports. You remember a week or 10 days ago that President Trump had asked, apparently, for some strike options and then, apparently, was talked out of them by his top military and, apparently, his secretary of state as well. What do you think might happen, and what is the point of thwarting diplomacy to presumably make the world a safer place?

GERANMAYEH: Well, let’s remember that this year began with the assassination of a top Iranian military commander, Qasem Soleimani, in neighboring Iraq, and it’s coming to an end with a severe attack, a very sophisticated attack, inside the Iranian homeland. And there are multiple options that are now in the cards, I think, for proponents of the maximum pressure campaign to build this wall against diplomacy. This assassination, I think, shows quite a high threshold for escalation. And we should expect perhaps similar attacks coming up either inside Iran or in the wider Middle East. Now, the point of this, I think the crux of it is that the proponents of maximum pressure never really wanted any sort of diplomatic efforts between Iran and the United States to follow. And it’s the very fact that there could be some sort of rapprochement between the two sides that makes many nervous. In terms of next steps and whether we could have a prospect for diplomacy, I think the ball is in the court of both the Biden camp and also the Iranian leadership. On the Biden camp side, they need to make a decision, and I think in — fairly soon coming into office in January, about whether they want to engage Iran quite rapidly in a diplomatic effort to come back to the JCPOA, the so-called nuclear deal, or if they are going to push the debate towards leveraging the Trump era sanctions, as some more hawkish voices in Washington and elsewhere are pushing them to do so. And, Iran, there needs to be a real decision now whether they are going to retaliate quickly or not towards these recent attacks that they have seen unfold.