Very bad news today: the assassination of Iran’s head of nuclear research, Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, by an armed group of at least five to six people who were clearly very prepared and had complex support. How did they put a pickup truck full of explosives on the road this scientist was supposed to take, have a car full of armed operatives right near, and then manage to disappear?

The most worrying aspect is the date chosen for an attack whose objective appears to be—on the most irenic reading of it—to prevent a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015. In fact, I don’t think it simply makes the declared task of the president-elect—rejoin or renegotiate the JCPA—much harder or rather impossible. It goes much further, into uncharted territory. The murders of two weeks ago (by Israel?) and the prior assassination of Qasem Soleimani by US forces, make it more likely now that Trump’s electoral goals and the military designs of those who use him (the present government of Israel and Pompeo, I imagine) have become one single end, just when US election laws and courts left no hope to Trumpists. It looks like the circumstances—new right-wing personnel in the Defense Department and reluctance by this outgoing administration to inform Biden’s team—are ripe for war, whether Iran retaliates or not.