Israeli Covert Operations against Iran’s Leadership: Objectives Achieved, but the Regime Endures

The covert operations carried out by Israeli intelligence, aimed at eliminating Iran’s military and political leadership, achieve their immediate objectives. However, they do not result in a change of the ruling regime of the Islamic Republic.

War and Law: An Eternal Contradiction

The Strategy of Decapitation: Aims and Consequences

Bill Scher, Political Editor for the Washington Monthly, in his article ‘All the Ways Trump’s War on Iran Is Disastrous’, drawing on historical documents, pinpoints that the death of Khamenei would represent the first assassination of a head of state by the United States government since 1975, when the Church Committee uncovered five such plots, three of which ended up a success. In 1976, the United States ratified an international treaty prohibiting the assassination of heads of state, and President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the involvement of the government in assassinations altogether. With minor amendments by his successors, this order remains in force today, though it is often interpreted in a broader fashion to justify strikes against terrorist leaders. Trump is now ignoring these legal precedents, without citing any imminent threat or emergency.

Bill Scher comes to the conclusion that ‘normal international relations’ are impossible when the head of one state can be killed whenever another head of state pleases.

Depriving an adversary of its leadership components can paralyze its defence or offensive capabilities, disorganize its resistance, and tilt the balance towards defeat. Military pressure at the front, combined with the removal of an enemy’s political leader, is intended not only to ‘behead’ the opponent but also to wreak havoc on the society, sow the sense of vulnerability, and fuel widespread dissatisfaction with the existing regime. In simple terms, by means of changing the ruling class, the other belligerent can secure military victory, compel the enemy to surrender, and achieve all the objectives of a military campaign. As a consequence, once hostilities begin, the political and military leadership of the adversary becomes a target for subversive operations by intelligence agencies, where the norms of international law are often rendered inoperative.

The United States and Israel, having ushered in a new phase of confrontation with Iran, have indicated the need for regime change in Tehran as one of........

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