A Brief History
On November 27, 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist and purported head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, was assassinated in Absard, Iran. Incredibly, the murder was carried out in a manner worthy of a Hollywood movie plot, by use of a satellite controlled autonomous gun that had been pre-staged, allegedly by Israeli operatives.
Digging Deeper
The Israeli and US governments both stated that neither would allow Iran to develop or control a nuclear weapon. The US is believed to have been behind a hacking attack of Iranian nuclear lab computers in 2010, as part of the policy of not allowing the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons.
While Israel denied the assassination and the US would not confirm the computer attack, the world wonders just how far either nation will go to positively prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. Would a preemptive military attack by missiles or bomber aircraft be mounted? What would the world reaction be?
Question for students (and subscribers): Should the US or Israel risk war to keep Iran nuke free? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Albright, David and Sarah Burkhard. Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons. Institute for Science and International Security Press, 2021.
Futter, Andrew. The Politics of Nuclear Weapons. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Fars Media Corporation of the funeral of Fakhrizadeh at Iran’s Ministry of Defense headquarters, the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
