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Why Was Iran's Nuclear Expert Fakhrizadeh Secretly Decorated After the JCPOA Went into Effect?
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - The Iranian Islamic Republic has issued portraits of the late Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Brig.-Gen. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the mastermind of the Iranian military nuclear program, hugging the late commander of the IRGC Quds Force, Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani, clarifying how these two generals were responsible for the two parallel vectors to turn Iran into a hegemon superpower - exporting the Islamic revolution and acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons. One photo shows Fakhrizadeh receiving a special award on February 9, 2016, from President Rouhani for his role in the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Why was the Iranian leadership so appreciative of the head of the military nuclear program after the conclusion of a deal that allegedly guaranteed to block Iran's path to achieve a nuclear weapon? One would expect Fakhrizadeh to be upset about a deal that limited his work. He had every reason to be gleeful because he had instructed the Iranian negotiating team on what issues they should insist upon to make sure that the deal improves Iran's capability to acquire a nuclear arsenal. He got everything he wanted. Now, in retrospect, we know that Iran never meant to give up its military nuclear project. This is evident from the way they saved their nuclear archives, from the contents of the archives, and from everything Iran did after the JCPOA came into effect. The "maximum pressure" policy gives the Biden administration the leverage to force Iran to accept a much better deal that would really guarantee that the radical Islamic regime will not have a nuclear weapon for decades to come. The writer, former head of the research division of IDF Military Intelligence, is a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center.