Israel has killed one senior Iranian leader after another in airstrikes as it seeks to overthrow the Islamic Republic. But its past experience against senior militants shows that the strategy has its limits and can sometimes backfire.
Israel kills Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The group is still firing rockets.
It eliminated senior Hamas officials. The group still controls half of Gaza and has not laid down its weapons.
As a strategy, targeted killings are rarely used to target a single country. While it may provide tangible achievements that leaders can call victory—especially in wars with no clear end—it rarely addresses the underlying grievances that fuel conflict.
Jon Altman, chair of global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the impact of targeted killings tends to diminish over time.
He noted that the Iranian government and military are composed of several overlapping institutions that have so far survived waves of punitive strikes by the United States and Israel. “Even autocrats rely on entire networks that support them,” he said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening battle of the war. He was succeeded by his son Mojtaba, who was considered more uncompromising. After senior commanders were killed or driven underground, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards continued to fire waves of missiles at Israel and neighboring Gulf states and effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz.
ancient strategy
Israel has carried out dozens of targeted killings throughout its history, but Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups often endure and grow stronger after the deaths of top leaders.
Take Hezbollah, for example. In 1992, an Israeli airstrike killed then-leader Abbas Mousavi in southern Lebanon. Under the leadership of his charismatic successor Nasrallah, Hezbollah grew into the most powerful armed group in the region and entered a bloody stalemate with Israel in 2006.
Nasrallah and nearly all of his deputies were killed in the 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Iran-backed group suffered other heavy losses that year but resumed missile and drone attacks on Israel days after the current war began.
Hamas has lost one leader after another. Israel killed its founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a 2004 airstrike. Since then, almost all the masterminds of the group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have been killed.
Both groups are keeping up the pressure due to decades of grievances stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The United States has also carried out targeted killings against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, killing Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan in 2011 and killing Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Both organizations have been significantly weakened, but this comes after years of fighting with ground troops involved.
It has rarely been used against the state, and with mixed results
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the killing of the Iranian leader was aimed at weakening the government so that the Iranians could rise up and overthrow it, ideally replacing it with a friendly government like the pro-Western monarchy that was overthrown in 1979.
There have been no signs of such an uprising since the war began, after Iranian authorities cracked down on mass protests in January.
U.S. President Donald Trump has sometimes suggested the war is aimed at promoting a more moderate leader from within Iran’s government, but the end result could be a more aggressive war or complete chaos if the country collapses.
In this day and age, it is rare for one country to assassinate the leader of another.
In 1961, Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was overthrown and killed in a plot backed by the CIA and Belgium. The African country subsequently endured decades of dictatorship, civil war, and instability.
NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya paved the way for rebels to capture and kill longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi. After more than a decade of fighting and instability, the country remains divided. Iraq was plunged into similar chaos after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s government and led to his detention and eventual hanging.
The question is who is behind
Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence research unit, said targeted killings can be an effective tool but are not “the solution to every problem.”
“These actions by themselves do not significantly alter the ability of these groups to cause damage and carry out attacks,” he said. “But it is important for Israel to weaken its enemies.”
He noted that in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran, Israel has removed dozens of figures, reshaping leadership structures in lasting ways. In Iran, “maybe there’s not ‘regime change’ yet, but there is ‘regime change.’ These are not the same people,” he said.
Israel’s decapitation attacks on Iran have reduced the ability of political leaders to issue orders, formulate policy and make decisions to the military, a senior Israeli intelligence official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential assessment.
But killing leaders can also backfire, radicalizing followers, promoting more extreme successors, or turning slain leaders into martyrs with lasting influence.
Max Abrams, a political scientist at Northeastern University, said data from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories show a surge in violence against civilians following targeted killings.
“There is a risk of leadership being decapitated,” he said. “When you take out a leader who likes a certain level of restraint and has influence over subordinates, then chances are, after that person dies, you’re going to see more extreme tactics.”
Mohannad Haq Ali, deputy director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said targeted killings can create a leadership vacuum and the potential for change, but only if combined with a coherent political strategy.
“You can decapitate a group or defeat it militarily, but if you don’t follow through politically, it doesn’t work. And it’s hard to see this going any further,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Joseph Federman in Jerusalem contributed.
