“One of their eyes and possibly both were directed at Washington and not at Iran,” Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin, the former head of military intelligence and current director of the Institute for National Security Studies, told the Army Radio Station Nov. 29. He was responding to the interviewer’s question about the motives behind the Nov. 26 assassination of Iran’s nuclear program mastermind, Mohsen Fakharizadeh. While the entire Middle East is caught up in the unprecedented tensions between Tehran and Jerusalem and growing concerns in other regional capitals, the more interesting axis is actually the one between Washington and Tel Aviv (where Israel’s security agencies are located).

The Iranians, Americans and the rest of the world have already estimated that the particularly impressive and daring operation in the heart of Iran was most likely the work of Israel’s Mossad. While Israel did not assume formal responsibility for the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not resist a barely veiled admission in a video clip he posted shortly after the news broke.

“Israel’s activities in recent months in general, and this time in particular, remind me of a hurried shopping spree by the mistress of a dying lover,” a Western diplomat serving in the region told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “She knows that once he closes his eyes for good, the party is over, so she is doing as much as she can right now.”

According to this interpretation, Netanyahu’s desk and that of Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen are piled high with “to do” lists, and they are trying to tick off as many boxes as possible before Washington cuts off their credit line. Their goal is to undermine Iran’s nuclear program, destabilize the Iranian regime and create as much chaos as possible to hamper renewed negotiations by the future Joe Biden administration with Tehran and a return to the Barack Obama administration’s Iran policy so reviled by Netanyahu.