The United States and Israel opted for the “decapitation” in Iran, kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many others. History shows the danger of this approach in nationalist conflicts: it often works tactically, but fails strategically.
Although the weekend's “shock and awe” bombing campaign and US-led regime change As I remind many of the case of Iraq, it is not the most instructive case. It would be Chechnya.
On April 21, 1996, Russian forces carried out one of the most precise assassinations of the modern era.
The target was Dzhokhar Dudayev, leader of Chechnya's separatist war against Moscow. Repeated attempts to locate him had failed. He was mobile and deeply cautious.
President Boris Yeltsin called for talks. Dudayev refused. Only after King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to act as an intermediary – in a mediation effort encouraged by the United States – did Dudayev accept the call. As Dudayev spoke on a portable satellite phone to the Moroccan monarch, Russian planes waited beyond visual range.
Signal intelligence fixed in phone emissions. Two missiles hit. Dudayev died instantly.
By operational standards, it was flawless. The 100% tactical success was based more on James Bond's tricks than Tom Clancy's technology. Diplomatic choreography created electronic exposure. Precision weapons did the rest. No ground assault. There are no Russian casualties. Without ambiguity.
For air power theorists shaped by the 1991 Persian Gulf War, this was the embodiment of a powerful idea largely refined in American planning circles: strategic bombing could kill, overthrow or paralyze enemy leaders and compress wars into days. Like the Texas Ranger motto – “One mutiny, one Ranger” – the implicit promise was “one war, one raid.”
The rationale behind supposed decapitation regimes is hierarchies: if the apex is removed, the structure collapses. In Chechnya, only the first step was taken, which was predictable. Nationalism is not stagnant or hierarchical. It grows after foreign attacks and evolves into more powerful identity coalitions.
When American strikes failed to kill Moammar Gaddafi in 1986 and Saddam Hussein on numerous occasions in the 1990s, many airpower advocates concluded that near misses were the problem. If the leader really died, the regime would fracture.
Russia – with critical help from the United States – demonstrated that execution could be perfected.
But execution was never the central variable.
The assassination of leaders in international disputes does not simply eliminate authority; redistributes it under emotional mobilization. That is exactly what has begun in Iran, after months of succession planning with the expectation that Khamenei, 86, could be assassinated. A senior Iranian official said an interim committee would lead the government while a new leader is elected.
This is the pattern after beheading: martyrdom transfers legitimacy. The successor must demonstrate determination, not flexibility. The political market rewards maximalism. Moderation turns into disloyalty.
Dudayev's death did not fragment the resistance. He sanctified it.
Power passed into the hands of commanders less constrained by negotiation and more willing to escalate the situation. Among them was Shamil Basayev. The center narrowed. The emotional intensity amplified.
The attack was tactically successful, but it was a strategic catastrophe, triggering greater nationalism and violence that fueled years of bloody war with Russia.
This is the “smart bomb” trap: a discreet attack aimed at compressing a conflict transforms its character.
Once identity merges with martyrdom, the climb becomes politically easier. The reprisals are expanding. Successors have fewer incentives to compromise and greater incentives to demonstrate defiance. Diplomacy becomes less viable and war much more likely. What began as a precision event evolves into an unstable escalation.
The phase shift now that military superpowers can apparently kidnap or killing foreign leaders with precision is not technological. It's political.
Iranian leaders prepared structured (multi-rung) chains of succession in anticipation of targeted attacks. Now that Khamenei is dead, there are several plausible possibilities, none necessarily stabilizing: a rapid injection of nationalist energy into the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; a struggle for leadership resolved through nationalist hardening; diffusion of authority through semi-autonomous networks; and further activation of Iran's numerous militant proxies across the region.
Each route increases the risk of escalation. All of this diminishes future American control of the situation.
Iran is not Iraq in 2003. It is approximately six times larger in territory and four times larger in population. It has dense networks of partners throughout the Middle East capable of not only launching missile attacks, which began almost immediately, just as Tehran had promised – but also asymmetric retaliation, including targeted operations against US allied leaders in the region.
Israeli leaders may be well protected from Iranian nationalist plots. But are they Saudis, Emiratis and others who have worked with the Trump administration? Decapitation is not a unilateral instrument.
Fragmentation does not guarantee calm either. A fractured Iran of nearly 90 million people could produce competing nationalist centers that would seek legitimacy through confrontation. The escalation options available after a martyrdom event are broader than before the strike.
Precision warfare promises control, but it can clearly intensify chaos. The most dangerous outcome of a campaign like the US-Israeli strikes is not operational failure. It's operational brilliance. Because that's when leaders believe the escalation is still under control, just as the conflict crosses the threshold into something much bigger.
A perfect hit can be the start of a much bigger war.
Robert Papeprofessor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the director of the Chicago Security and Threat Project. He writes the Substack “The climbing trap.”
