“Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.” Thus spoke Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, in a characteristically histrionic moment during his April 2018 presentation on Iran’s nuclear programme.

No one in the Middle East is now likely to forget the name of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear physicist, who was ambushed and killed by gunmen near Tehran late on Friday. Especially not the Iranians — any more than they will forget Qassem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard commander of Iran’s foreign legion, assassinated by a US missile strike at Baghdad airport in January.

Israel, rather than the US, is probably responsible for killing Fakhrizadeh, just as it is widely blamed or, depending on the viewpoint, credited with murdering four nuclear scientists on his staff in 2010-12. But those hits came before Iran reached an accord in 2015 with the US, then led by President Barack Obama, and five world powers to constrain its nuclear programme and allow international monitors to verify agreed limits.