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 ended a regime that was openly antagonistic to Israel, but it also opened the doors for pro-Iranian forces to take power.

As a result, in the following two decades, Iraq served as a launching pad for Iran’s regional proxy strategy, which saw it build a powerful network of nonstate actors that threatened US and Israeli interests.

The security vacuum created by the US invasion triggered various insurgencies, the most devastating of which was the rise of ISIL (ISIS), which swept through the Middle East, killing thousands of innocent people, including US citizens, and triggering a massive refugee wave towards US and Israeli allies in Europe.

Another case in point is Hamas. Since the early 2000s, Israel has repeatedly tried to assassinate its leaders. In 2004, it succeeded in killing its founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and then his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was considered a moderate. A few assassinations later, Yahya Sinwar was elected head of Hamas in Gaza and went on to plan the October 7, 2023, attack.

Hezbollah has a similar history. Its late leader Hassan Nasrallah, who successfully led the expansion of the group to a formidable nonstate power, ascended to its leadership after Israel assassinated his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi.

Two and half years of war and mass killing of leadership may now have devastated both armed groups, but Israel has failed to assassinate the idea behind them: resistance to occupation. The current lull in fighting may be the quiet before another storm.

In the Iranian case, it is highly unlikely that whoever replaces Khamenei would be as open to negotiations as he was. The statements by the Omani interlocutors during the talks in Muscat and Geneva pointed to major concessions on the nuclear issue that Iran under Khamenei was prepared to make. It is unlikely that his replacement would have the political space to follow suit.

If Israel and the US continue their campaign and really push for state collapse in Iran, what comes out of that ensuing chaos could be anyone’s guess. But if we are to go by recent experiences in Iraq and Libya, a security vacuum in Iran would have devastating consequences for US allies in the region and in Europe.

That raises the pertinent question of what Israel and the US stand to gain from their “decapitation” strategy in Iran.

For Netanyahu, the assassination of Khamenei is a major success. Facing crucial elections that could mean the possible end of his political life and maybe his imprisonment over four corruption charges, the short-term gain in popularity and votes is worth it. Israeli leaders do little thinking and planning on the mid- to long term and do not have to bear the consequences of military adventurism abroad. After all, Israeli society is very much in favour of it.

But for Trump, the gains are not as apparent. He gets to brag about killing an 86-year-old ailing leader of a faraway country to a public that has no appetite for war. At a time of a continuing cost-of-living crisis in the US, he is spending billions of taxpayer dollars to fight a war against a country that posed no imminent threat, a war that many Americans are increasingly identifying as “Israel’s war”.

Instead of projecting power, Trump risks showing weakness and being seen as a US president fooled into starting a costly war to ensure the political survival of the prime minister of a foreign country.

It is clear for now that the US president has drawn a line at putting US boots on the ground. At some point, he will have to end the bombardment campaign and pull US troops. He will leave behind a disaster that US allies in the region will have to bear the brunt of. US regional alliances are sure to suffer. Domestic audiences are sure to ask questions.

This will be yet another US military adventure in the region that will cost US taxpayers’ money, US soldiers’ lives and foreign policy clout and offer no return. The hope is that Washington may finally learn its lesson that assassinations and decapitation strategies don’t work.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.