To put it mildly, I am uncomfortable with any policy that involves assassinating scientists. I can understand that it might be necessary in some extreme cases, like preventing a hostile adversary from developing weapons that can put your entire populace at risk, but it really ought to be a last resort. For one thing, it does nothing to resolve conflicts between nations, and will tend to invite revenge attacks. Most likely, it will do no more than delay the development of weapons and make your enemy more determined to use them. Stalling tactics can be better than no tactics at all, but they’re only a solution if you use the borrowed time to reduce the overall risk.

The Israelis’ policy of killing Iranian nuclear scientists might make sense for them but it doesn’t follow that it fits America’s national security needs. We had a policy, which Israel vociferously opposed, of easing tensions with Iran and heavily monitoring their nuclear program. It had massive international buy-in. And it made it unnecessary to target scientists in Iran. Trump withdrew from that agreement, and Biden wants to stand it back up. That’s why the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is so troubling. It seems designed to cut off Biden’s plans.

Sending kill teams into a foreign country to murder their scientists is not a sustainable policy. It’s an act of war and the only reason it doesn’t immediately result in open conflict is because, in this case, Iran is too weak to fight back. This is largely because they don’t have nuclear weapons, so it’s kind of obvious that these actions will incentivize them to obtain nuclear weapons. The idea, I guess, is to make the nuclear physicists too scared to work on the project, but I’m not sure they really have any choice in the matter, and they’ll be expected to take risks out of pure patriotism.

It just seems like a much better idea, and certainly a less morally dubious path, to pursue a monitoring program and seek ways to reduce tensions. I’m not naive about the nature of Iran’s revolutionary government, but I can’t support these murderous violations of the sovereignty when clear alternatives are available.

I also think it’s unacceptable to take rash actions designed to limit an incoming president’s options, especially when it’s clear that a new policy is coming.