The party celebrating Joe Biden’s proclaimed victory was in full swing in Tehran, and then it was rudely interrupted. The New York Times reported Friday that “Iran’s top nuclear scientist, who American and Israeli intelligence have long charged was behind secret programs to design an atomic warhead, was shot and killed on Friday as he was traveling in a vehicle in northern Iran.” Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “has been considered the driving force behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program for two decades.” Suddenly the future didn’t look as bright for the mullahs as it had just hours before.

Up until Fakhrizadeh was killed, the mullahs and their henchmen had been displaying a swagger they hadn’t shown since the palmy days of Barack Hussein Obama. After Israel struck Iranian Quds Force installations in Syria in mid-November, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh issued a bold Biden-based threat, declaring: “The Zionist regime is well aware that the era of hit and run is over….Iran’s presence in Syria is advisory, and naturally, if anyone disrupts this advisory presence, our response will be a crushing one.” Especially now, with compliant Old Joe in the White House

Nor was that all the Biden buoyancy. Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency announced last Sunday that the Islamic Republic was stepping up its nuclear program: Iran’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations Kazem Gharibabadi “says the country will operate 174 advanced IR-M2 centrifuges at Natanz nuclear facility.” Gharibabadi also took care to emphasize that “all of Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful, carried out under the supervision of the IAEA, and the United States has no excuse to attack Iran.”

No worries. With the foreign policy establishment firmly back in the saddle, doing anything to offend or oppose the mullahs is the last thing on anyone’s mind.