Israel’s ongoing campaign to kill top figures in Iran and in Iran-backed armed groups has become a prominent feature of the war, even as fighting shows no sign of ending. In an Associated Press analysis published this week, Israel is described as taking out senior leaders through airstrikes after years in which targeting top commanders had often produced short-term disruption but long-term persistence.
The strategy has unfolded across multiple arenas, with the reporting describing the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the continued rocket fire that followed. It also describes strikes that removed Hamas’ top brass while Hamas retained significant control in Gaza and continued to operate. The same approach is also described in the current phase against Iran’s senior leadership, including the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei early in the war and subsequent steps to replace him.
Israel’s campaign has drawn commentary from defense and security analysts who say leadership decapitation can change how organizations function without necessarily resolving why conflicts continue. Jon Alterman, chair of Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the impact of targeted killings often fades over time and pointed to the structure of Iran’s state apparatus, saying, “Even dictators need to rely on entire networks that support them.”
The reporting describes how those networks matter in practice. It says that after top commanders were killed or driven underground, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard continued to fire waves of missiles at Israel and neighboring Gulf states, including tactics that have effectively constrained shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That continued pressure has undercut, at least so far, the idea that removing a leader automatically eliminates a broader capacity to sustain a conflict.
Supporters of the approach argue it can create real, measurable military effects. A senior Israeli intelligence official told The Associated Press that Israel’s “decapitation strikes” in Iran had degraded political leaders’ ability to issue orders to the military, form policy and make decisions. However, the report also lays out why experts say such effects do not necessarily translate into political outcomes that end wars.
Israel’s own leadership has linked the killings to a political end state. The analysis says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the killing of Iran’s leaders as aimed at weakening the government so that Iranians can rise up and overthrow it, ideally replacing it with a friendly government modeled on the pro-Western monarchy overthrown in 1979. The reporting says there has been no sign of such an uprising since the war began, after Iranian authorities crushed mass protests in January.
Other elected officials have also floated different political theories about what the war is meant to accomplish. The Associated Press report says U.S. President Donald Trump has at times suggested the war is aimed at elevating a more moderate leader from within Iran’s government. The analysis warns that such outcomes are uncertain and could instead produce a more radical successor or chaos if the state implodes.
The article also situates the present campaign in a wider historical context in which targeted killing against nonstate groups has not reliably achieved decisive results. It says Israel has carried out dozens of targeted killings throughout its history, including against Hezbollah, where an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah’s then-leader Abbas Musawi in 1992. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah grew into a powerful armed group and fought Israel to a bloody stalemate in 2006, and the reporting says Nasrallah and nearly all of his deputies were killed in the 2024 war while the group resumed attacks days after the start of the current war.
On Hamas, the analysis similarly notes that Israel killed Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a 2004 airstrike and that many of the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack architects have since been killed. Despite those losses, the report says both Hezbollah and Hamas have continued to press on, fueled by long-standing grievances stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While targeted killing is often framed as an efficient way to remove “command and control,” analysts say it can also destabilize the organizations it targets in ways that worsen violence. Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence research division, told The Associated Press that targeted killings can be effective but are not a “cure for all problems,” saying: “These operations by themselves don’t dramatically change the ability of those organizations to cause damage and to carry out attacks,” and adding, “But it’s important for Israel to weaken its enemies.”
Still, Kuperwasser said that removing leaders can reshape leadership structures in lasting ways, and in Iran he suggested a distinction between immediate regime change and longer-term shifts: “maybe there’s not ‘regime change’ yet, but there is ‘change in regime.’ The people are not the same people.” Other researchers, however, warn that this kind of leadership disruption can produce harder-line tactics after a death. Northeastern University political scientist Max Abrahms said data from conflicts involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories shows violence against civilians spikes after targeted killings, adding, “Leadership decapitation is risky,” and: “When you take out a leader that prefers some degree of restraint and had influence over subordinates, then there’s a very good chance that, upon that person’s death, you’re going to see even more extreme tactics.”
Another constraint highlighted in the reporting is the political follow-through that would be needed to translate military disruption into a stable end to the conflict. Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told The Associated Press that decapitation alone is not sufficient: “You can decapitate an organization or defeat it militarily, but if you don’t follow through politically, it doesn’t work. And it’s hard to see how this goes much further,” he said.