This past Friday, the architect of the Iranian nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in a well-organized raid 70 km outside the city of Tehran. A commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Fakhrizadeh headed the important Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research of the Ministry of Defense, which conducted nuclear weapons research. His killing reflects a major breach in Iranian counterintelligence and could indicate that the regime’s intelligence and security apparatuses have been compromised. Iran will have to respond to Fakhrizadeh´s assassination, but will likely do so in a manner that avoids full-scale war.

On August 7, 2020, the number 2 figure in al-Qaeda, Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah (known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri), was gunned down in Tehran. Al-Masri’s very presence in Iran exhibited the close relationship Tehran has with the Sunni terrorist organization, and his slaying shows the weakness of Iranian counterintelligence. The regime’s frustration at this intelligence failure will likely be expressed through acts of violence. It will probably reform its counterintelligence community and may ask for assistance in this endeavor from both Russia and China.

In the summer of 1988, during the premiership of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, thousands of opponents of the Islamic Republic were extrajudicially executed while in prison. Newly published evidence from Amnesty International shows that Mousavi, despite his denials, was aware of the executions, casting a dark shadow over the reformist movement in Iran.