For Iran, 2020 Was Not A Good Year

The year 2020 was not a good one for Iran. It began with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and head of its Quds Force, and ended with Israel’s assassination of the “mastermind” of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The report on Iran’s dismal year is here: “Iran standoff 2021 forecast: From initiative to uncertainty – analysis,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, December 27, 2020:

The standoff with Iran in 2020 literally started with a “boom!”

On January 3, Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated by the US.

Obviously, this was not the beginning of the nuclear standoff. That goes back decades, and its latest chapter comes out of different views that the Islamic Republic and the Trump administration took regarding the 2015 nuclear deal.

But it absolutely captured the vibe of 2020 in relations between the US-Israel-moderate Sunni allies versus Tehran.

Basically, the US alliance had the upper hand far more in 2020 than in previous years….

That upper hand was in large part thanks to a series of acts of derring-do by agents of Mossad.

Soleimani was not the only key turning point.

International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Grossi changed the entire conversation by using intelligence gathered by the Mossad from Iran’s own nuclear archives to publicly accuse the Islamic Republic of noncompliance for the first time since 2015.

In June, the IAEA Board of Governors even voted to condemn Iran for its failure to give inspectors access to newly discovered, undeclared nuclear sites and to explain illicit and newly discovered nuclear material that was also undeclared.

Israel’s capture of Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018, including some 100,000 separate files, allowed the outside world to find out about nuclear sites that Iran had never declared to the IAEA, much less allowed them to be inspected. The archival material explained the presence of nuclear material that the inspectors had found at certain seemingly innocuous sites, for which Iran had been unable to provide any plausible explanation.

As this war of words grabbed the headlines, between late June and early August, Iran experienced nearly six weeks of mysterious explosions at around a dozen facilities.

The most important was the destruction of its Natanz advanced centrifuge facility for enriching uranium on July 2. Experts said this set back its nuclear enrichment efforts by one to two years.

Of the dozen “mysterious explosions” in Iran this past summer, some of which took place at what were believed to be sites linked to its nuclear program, the most important was the “sabotage” (an inside job by Mossad agents, who apparently planted a bomb) of the advanced centrifuge plant at Natanz. It set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment of uranium by one to two years, according to both IAEA and American experts. That Mossad was able to get inside the massively guarded plant was horrifying to the Iranians, who are still trying to figure out how it happened.

Though not reported until November, Iran was embarrassed on August 7 when al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was assassinated.

Iran’s embarrassment was twofold. First, the long arm of the Mossad showed yet again it could reach deep into Iran to kill its enemies. In this case, the Mossad was acting at the behest of the Americans to remove Al-Qaeda’s No. 2. Abu Muhammad al-Masri had been the mastermind of the bombings of two American embassies in Africa in 1998, and Washington had long been eager to see him dead. He had been on America’s radar, but successfully avoided capture for more than two decades. In 2020 the Mossad finally caught up with him, and gave him the sendoff that Washington had requested.

Second, Iran has always maintained that it opposes Al-Qaeda, and has never given refuge to any of its members. But Al-Masri was gunned down on August 7 on the streets of Tehran. It was the modus operandi Mossad had used to assassinate four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012: a motorbike pulled up beside Al-Masri’s car; shots were fired; he and his daughter, the wife of one of Osama bin Laden’s sons, were instantly killed; the motorbike roared off. Al-Masri had been living in Iran all along. When the report of his killing was finally made public by the New York Times in November, the Iranians promptly denied it, claiming the story was “made-up information.” No one, of course, believed them.

Then, on November 27, Iran’s military nuclear program chief, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated, another crushing blow to its nuclear progress.

Fakhrizadeh was considered the “mastermind” of Iran’s nuclear program. He will be hard to replace, both because of his surpassing expertise, and because not too many people will likely step forward to replace Fakhrizadeh, considering what happened to him and to four other leading Iranian nuclear scientists. Those Mossad agents are still in Tehran, ready to pull up on their motorbikes beside their next target.

These last two [assassinations of Al-Masri and Fakhrizadeh] were carried out by the Mossad, according to foreign sources.

All of this is without even getting into the many Abraham Accords normalization deals that have legitimized Israel and further isolated Iran in the region….

Israel is now in the process of normalizing relations with four Arab states – the U.A.E., Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco – and more are likely to soon follow. This has filled Tehran with fury, as more countries choose to promote their national self-interest over that of the Palestinians. But just as among the Palestinians in Ramallah, Iranians can only sputter in spittle-flecked fury at this unexpected and unwelcome development. The “Rafidite dogs” bark; the caravan moves on.

Iran threatened back in January a terrible vengeance for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, but only launched two feeble attacks. First, Iran lobbed 22 rockets at the Al-Asad and Erbil airbases in Iraq, where American servicemen were stationed. The Iranians took care to warn the Iraqis of the attack in advance, knowing that they would in turn alert the Americans, who thus had time to take cover. No Americans were killed; dozens had mild concussions from the blast but soon recovered. Iran launched another, equally ineffective attack in late December, firing 20 rockets into the Green Zone, where the American Embassy is located. The result: no American dead or wounded. And that seems to be the extent of the “terrible revenge” that Iran promised back in January after Soleimani was killed.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aggression by Iran has been its most successful cyberattacks to date against insurance giant Shirbit, Israel Aerospace Industries and others….

These cyberattacks on Israeli companies at the end of November have been a gigantic headache, with leaks of the personal data of many Israelis, though nowhere near as serious as the massive cyberattacks launched by the Russians against both the U.S. government and all of America’s major tech companies in December.

The memory of what Israel managed to do after Iran had tried through cyberattacks to increase the amount of chlorine released into the Jewish state’s water supply, and thus to poison Israelis, certainly must have been on Iranian minds. After discovering, and shutting down the attack, within minutes – no Israelis were harmed – Israel launched in response its own cyberattack; Israeli government hackers shut down Iran’s port at Bandar Abbas for days, causing immense traffic tie-ups and confusion not only at the port itself, but on the backed-up highways leading to it. Iran no doubt kept its December cyberattack on Israeli targets within bounds lest Israel, in response, used the occasion to let loose a massive attack on Iran, far more damaging than the one against Bandar Abbas.

And yet, Israel goes into 2021 in a very uneasy state.…

Biden has committed not to just be a third Obama term and talked tough about Iran’s missile and precision-rocket programs. Yet, this is a long way from him being ready to stare down the ayatollahs while 150 Democrats in the House of Representatives press him to simply rejoin the deal.

Biden has been suggesting that just perhaps, after all, he won’t simply return to the 2015 nuclear deal, as he had formerly insisted. He wants to “lengthen and strengthen” the deal, by including in it limits on Iran’s missile program; if he follows through on this, it would be most welcome. But it’s hard to know which policy will prevail. Both Israel and the Sunni Arab states have asked to be included in any negotiations with Iran, which implies that there will be such negotiations, and not merely a return to the previous deal.

If Iran was not on the ropes in 2020, it was certainly on the run. But with no knockout blow delivered, 2021 could be very different.

Why would 2021 be “very different” for Iran, after its 2020 annus horribilis? What can Iran do in 2021 that it could not do in 2020? Will Mossad, after the successful sabotage in 2020 of the advanced centrifuge plant at Natanz and those “mysterious explosions” at ten other sites, and its assassinations of both Abu Muhammad Al-Masri and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, be in any way less formidable in 2021? Will it not be just as capable next year as it has been in this?

And will Iran in 2021 no longer fear to deliver that “terrible vengeance” for Qassem Soleimani’s death that it kept promising throughout 2020, but never delivered; the two feeble rocket attacks on Americans in Iraq, in January and December, with no American deaths, hardly qualify. Will Iran want to try its luck with more cyberattacks on Israel? Didn’t Israel’s cyberattack on Bandar Abbas offer a small sample of what it could do to Iran? Why would Iranian hackers think that in 2021 they are suddenly in the same league as the Israelis, whose prowess in cyberwarfare is well known?

Isn’t it more likely that Iran, having suffered so many humiliations in 2020 (the killings of Soleimani, Al-Masri, Fakhrizadeh, the sabotage at Natanz that set its nuclear program back by 1-2 years, the “mysterious explosions” at ten other sites, the IAEA’s public denunciation of Iran for its many deceptions and violations of the JCPOA), and with its economy still in free fall, will have been chastened, and seek only to have America’s crippling sanctions removed, rather than picking fights it cannot hope to win with the Jewish state? Nor will it be aggressive toward the Americans lest, having removed their sanctions on Iran, they decide to re-impose them if Iran misbehaves.

The author concludes that for Iran “2021 could be very different.” It will still have the Mossad to contend with, as the Israelis continue to seek ways to delay Iran’s nuclear program. It will still have to endure the unceasing Israeli attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah bases in Syria. It will still face the relentless enmity of the Gulf Arab states, especially the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, which continues its war against Iran’s proxy, the Houthis, in Yemen. It will still be unable to prevent a growing number of Arab and Muslim states from normalizing relations with Israel. The coming year “could be” very different for Iran. But more likely, beyond the possible relief of lifted American sanctions (which is no longer a given, for that move might now require Iran to accept limits on its ballistic missile program, which President Rouhani insists it will refuse to accept), it will be more of what, for Iran, has been a most dismal year.