Iran
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi

Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi

Photo by Trita Parsi

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Amid swirling questions over what, if any, role the United States played in the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, President Donald Trump on Friday amplified to his 88 million followers a Twitter post describing the killing as a "major psychological and professional blow" to Iran.

Sina Toossi, a senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), characterized the U.S. president's move as an "implicit approval if there ever was one." The president also retweeted a New York Times report on the killing, which took place as Fakhrizadeh was traveling by car in northern Iran.

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Joe Biden

President-elect Joe Biden

Photo by Gage Skidmore/ CC BY-SA 2.0

President Trump has called the Obama-initiated nuclear agreement for Iran a "horrible one-sided deal" and withdrew from it in 2018. Except he really didn't.

This past summer, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a series of appeals to the UN Security Council, saying that the United States was still a member of the deal, based on the council's 2015 favorable vote by former U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. Therefore, Washington had the right to initiate the "snapback"—a procedure that allows participants of the deal to reverse any easing or lifting of sanctions instituted by the pact.

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