Leadership Decapitations
The Pandora's Box of a Tactic with Little to Limited Promise of Success
Introduction
On February 28, 2026, Israel, with U.S. backing and perhaps operational support, ‘decapitated’ the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran by killing the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and two dozen more top Iranian leaders. The expectation stated explicitly by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the collapse of the Islamic regime and the installation of a U.S.- and Israeli-friendly or at least -compliant Iranian leadership. Two months later the Iranian Islamic Republic stands.
Two months earlier, the U.S. and/or Ukraine, or elements within, may have attempted a similar operation against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The possible drone assassination of Putin at his Valdai residence on 28 December 2025 involved Kiev launching some 91 drones in the direction of the Valdai, Novgorod presidential residence. It is unlikely that the Kremlin was able to discern whether US President Donlad Trump was a willing participant or a CIA dupe in the plot to fix Putin in place after their phone call prior to the former’s meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Trump had called Putin prior to a meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy and asked the Russian president to remain in place so he could get back to him on the results of the meeting. In this way, Putin apparently remained in place as the drones were directed at him during the Trump-Zelenskiy meeting. In my view, it is more likely that if indeed Putin was at Valdai and Trump ‘fixed’ him to that locality, then this was a Deep State machination designed to entrap Trump in the plot in order to scuttle the then burgeoning US-Russian rapprochement.
Not only has this preference for decapitating the political leadership of one’s enemies — more robust in recent years in Israel than in the U.S. — opened up a Pandora’s Box in international geopolitics, but it has done so with little promise to achieve the goals set out in adopting this destabilising policy. Below, I discuss the likelihood of such a policy bringing success as opposed to destabilisation, chaos, and more conflict as well as the possibility that more decapitations may be in the offing, given the history and cultures of the main combatants in the two main theatres of war existing today: the Russia-NATO Ukrainian War and the Third Persian Gulf War.
The Limited Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitations
