The Iranian people need to kill their asshole dictators.

"The Biden administration will be dealing with a weak regime and should negotiate from a position of strength to avoid the mistakes of the Obama nuclear deal."

Biden should do what Trump has been doing. Trump has been trying to wipe out Iran's theocratic assholes by destroying their economy. When that happens, the United States and Iran can be best friends, which is the way it should be.

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Wall Street Journal

OPINION

COMMENTARY

Home Is No Haven for Iran’s Regime

The killing of a top nuclear scientist dramatizes the ayatollahs’ domestic vulnerability.

By Kamran Bokhari

November 27, 2020

The killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh should be a message to Joe Biden and his nascent administration. Even as Iranian intelligence has pushed aggressively to expand its external influence via regional proxies, its domestic counterintelligence capabilities have significantly weakened. This is only the latest in a series of attacks that underscore the extent to which foreign intelligence services have been able to penetrate the country. Such attacks undermine the regime and could encourage domestic unrest. Mr. Biden should factor in this weakness as he prepares to negotiate with Tehran.

State media in Iran reported that Fakhrizadeh, 59, had been assassinated in the town of Absard. According to the reports, gunmen opened fire on the vehicle carrying Fakhrizadeh, who was also an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s elite military force. Iranian officials and unnamed U.S. officials say Israel was behind the attack.

This comes two weeks after intelligence leaks showed a top al Qaeda leader, who had been enjoying sanctuary in Tehran since the destruction of al Qaeda’s headquarters in Afghanistan nearly two decades ago, had been killed by Israeli operatives in an operation that was outsourced by U.S. intelligence. Earlier in the summer, Iran was rocked by a wave of unexplained explosions around the country, hitting at least one nuclear site. All these attacks point to an elaborate campaign designed to counter Iranian efforts to develop nuclear technology, especially for military purposes.

Israeli efforts to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear Rubicon go back to the late 2000s. But the bigger story is the sheer scale of Israeli or U.S. intelligence capabilities in Iran. Tehran’s security forces are obsessed with spying to the point that they have targeted many Iranians with Western citizenship. And Iran’s security establishment is known for effective tradecraft when it comes to intelligence and military operations involving proxies on its borders.

It’s ironic that such a country would become so vulnerable internally. This state of affairs suggests that external operations have been made possible at the expense of domestic security. It highlights a significant weakening of Iranian domestic security infrastructure, which is a maze of multiple entities: Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ministry of Intelligence and Security, IRGC, Basij, etc.

For Iran’s adversaries to pull off so many operations so quickly means there is a significant scale of local recruitment and management of cutouts. In many ways growing public anger against the regime in the last decade or so—including last year’s protests and brutal crackdown—has provided a recruitment-rich environment for foreign intelligence services.

The clerical regime is running into a credibility problem—with its proxies in the region, but more important among its own citizens. An Iran with internal security weakness is less likely to advance its radical regional agenda. More significant is that it faces the potential for sustained unrest from its own people, who suffer from economic pain and the chokehold of an autocratic state.

Tehran’s response will be tied to its need to try to extract a new agreement from the U.S. that can relieve a harsh sanctions regime. The Biden administration will be dealing with a weak regime and should negotiate from a position of strength to avoid the mistakes of the Obama nuclear deal.

Mr. Bokhari is director of analytical development at the Center for Global Policy.