Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination will likely backfire. Here is why |
A favourite tactic of war is to try to decapitate the enemy leadership. While such strategies might work in certain contexts, in the Middle East, they have proven to be a disastrous choice.
For sure, the assassination of an enemy leader might give a quick boost of popularity amid war. Certainly, United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are basking in the limelight of their perceived “success” in assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
But killing an 86-year-old man who had already been planning his succession due to his ill health is not that much of a feat considering the overwhelming firepower that the US and Israel together possess. More importantly, eliminating him does not necessarily mean that what follows would be a leadership or a regime that would accommodate Israeli and US interests.
That is because leadership assassinations do not lead to peaceful outcomes in the Middle East. They can open the door for much more radical successors or for chaos that leads to violence and upheaval.
A brief glance at recent history shows that whenever Israel and the US have tried the idea of leadership “decapitation” in various conflicts in the region, the results have been disastrous. In the case of Iraq, its leader Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces and handed over to allied Iraqi forces who executed him. This........