Why a policy of targeted assassination is doomed to fail

The recent assassinations in Beirut and Tehran of two of Israel’s foes — Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief — have put the Middle East on edge. The assassinations illustrate the shadow war waged for decades by Israel against Iran and its proxies. With the two nations locked in a dangerous cycle, the threat of a direct military confrontation looms ever larger.

Taking out senior figures does not destroy militant groups. Rather, it rather helps breathe new life into these groups by helping them win greater grassroots support. Yet extraterritorial assassinations have long been a favored tool of policy for Israel, just as they have been for the U.S. under successive administrations.

There has been a never-ending debate since then about the tenuous relationship of this practice with international law. The central issue, however, relates not to international law but rather to the political and military utility of a self-asserted license to kill.

Israel has a long history of assassinating its adversaries, a campaign that over the years has caused the death of several hundred militants, and at times of innocent civilians. Yet, far from tangibly advancing its security, Israel today confronts a more troubled neighborhood, including threats from virtually all directions.

If targeted assassinations could eliminate threats, Israel would not be fighting wars on several different fronts today — against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Palestinians in the West Bank. In Gaza, despite wreaking large-scale devastation and assassinating several Hamas commanders, Israeli forces are still confronting organized Hamas resistance 10 months since the overt war began, with the group even recruiting new fighters.

Israel, of course, faces an existential crisis. It may be justified to use all means at its disposal against those that threaten its existence, including the so-called “axis of resistance” made up of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. But Israeli decisionmakers over the years have often confused short-term tactical gains with long-term strategic success.

The focus on speedy victory over long-term success has made targeted killings central to Israeli defense, with the appetite for risk growing, despite assassinations not tangibly advancing Israel’s security.

Assassinated leaders are easily replaced with new leaders who are often more radicalized leaders from militant ranks. For example, Hamas took just a few days after Haniyeh’s July 31 assassination in Tehran to name Yahya Sinwar as its new political chief.

Extraterritorial assassinations, by and large, bring only transitory or near-term success. But they foster longer-term threats by stoking grassroots anger and unifying rival factions. The collateral damage from a major assassination often tends to be greater than the assassinating state bargained for. And instead of weakening a regime or a movement, major assassinations tend to strengthen it.

This is also largely true of America’s extraterritorial assassinations, which have continued apace under President Joe Biden. Indeed, the U.S. has developed a weapon that employs six long blades to “shred” a targeted person. The U.S. used this weapon, known as the “flying Ginsu,” in assassinating an Iraqi militia leader and his colleague in Baghdad in February.

When President Donald Trump’s administration assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite Quds Force, in early 2020, it was portrayed as a significant blow for the Iranian government. But the Iranian regime, faced with rising public discontent, turned the tactical blow into a strategic boon, using the attack to unify the nation. Paradoxically, it was calls for Soleimani’s killing in the U.S. and Israel that over a period of time helped lift him from relative obscurity in Iran to the status of a national icon.

Every Israeli or American assassination of an important Iranian figure helps Iran’s clerics reinvigorate their hold on power.

To be sure, some extraterritorial assassinations have been driven not by any strategic objectives but by the imperative to put to death, even if extrajudicially, international fugitives involved in horrific acts of terrorism, such as 9/11. Examples include al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was shot and killed in 2010 in his Pakistani hideout by Navy SEALs, and the 2022 assassination of al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul by an American drone strike.

Likewise, Israel’s covert campaign to avenge the murder of 11 of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics — dubbed “Operation Wrath of God” — came to symbolize Israeli willingness to hunt down its foes no matter how hard they may seek to hide in different countries. The 20-year campaign, which became the subject of Steven Spielberg’s movie “Munich,” killed Palestinian militants in Italy, France, Lebanon, Greece and Cyprus. 

But when Israel has carried out assassinations to achieve concrete security objectives, it has rarely achieved lasting success. For example, its suspected role in the killing of top Iranian nuclear scientists has only spurred Iran to speed up nuclear and missile advances.

And despite Israel assassinating several Hamas leaders since the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities, the Israeli military now acknowledges that eliminating Hamas is not a feasible military goal. Nor does Israel have any real military solution against Hezbollah, a more powerful militia than Hamas. Instead, with divisions in society widening, Israel faces a war within, as symbolized by the lawlessness of right-wing protesters storming military facilities.

More broadly, extraterritorial assassinations, by inflicting blows from which militants often not only recover but also get a major political boost, lead to negative consequences, from rising regional tensions to new escalatory spirals. This means that, even in death, a slain target could exact his own final act of revenge against the assassinating state.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”