This is why Israel didn't assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader.
Ali Khamenei lives today not because Israel can’t kill him, but because Israel believes some lines should not be crossed, even when facing an enemy that respects none.
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Ronen Bergman is one of Israel’s best.
Based in Tel Aviv, he is an investigative journalist and author, as well as a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and a senior political and military analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest paid newspaper.
So, when Bergman speaks, I listen.
This week, I had the chance to ask him why Israel didn’t assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during the 12-day Israel-Iran war last month. After all, Israel is not gun-shy about targeted assassinations.
In Bergman’s bestselling book, “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations,” he explains why and how Israel has likely carried out more assassinations than any other country since World War II.
And we know this isn’t just history; it’s current events. Since October 7th, Israel has systematically eliminated senior Hamas and Hezbollah operatives, often in daring operations deep inside enemy territory, including Tehran and Beirut. Names that once seemed untouchable are now obituaries. Israel’s reach is long, and its message is blunt: If you slaughter our people, you will pay with your life.
The Israeli approach to assassination — what military planners call mabam, an acronym for ma’arecha bein milchamot (“the war between wars”) — is built on a core principle: Eliminate imminent threats before they materialize. From the earliest days of the Jewish state, this doctrine has been as much about deterrence as justice.
Examples include Operation Wrath of God from 1972 to 1988, which followed the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The Mossad launched a worldwide campaign to eliminate those responsible; targets were tracked and killed in Europe and the Middle East through car bombs, gun ambushes, and other covert tactics.
In 1988, a team of Israeli commandos stormed the villa of the Palestine Liberation Organization military chief in Tunis and shot him 70 times. He was behind dozens of attacks on Israelis, including the 1978 Coastal Road massacre.
Eight years later, Israel took out Hamas’ top bomb-maker, nicknamed “The Engineer,” by planting explosives inside his cell phone and detonated them while he was using it. His death crippled Hamas’ bombing campaign at the time.
In 2008, Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, the founding member of Lebanon’s Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah’s leadership, was assassinated by Israel via a car bomb that was remotely detonated as Mughniyeh passed by on foot in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus, Syria. The official Israeli code name for this operation was “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Why? Because Mughniyeh had a wife in Beirut and three mistresses in Damascus.
Two years later, Mossad agents manipulated fake passports and disguises to infiltrate a Dubai hotel, where they suffocated Hamas’ weapons procurement chief in his room. Security footage later exposed the operation, sparking a diplomatic scandal.
A decade later, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, considered the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, was killed in a highly sophisticated operation using a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pickup truck. The device was equipped with artificial intelligence to compensate for latency and recoil, and it was operated via satellite. Not a single Mossad agent was on-site during the hit, making it one of the most audacious and technically advanced assassinations ever.
And that was all before October 7th. The Israeli assassinations since that dreadful day have been just as remarkable, if not more.
On July 31, 2024, at 01:14 a.m. Israel time (01:44 in Tehran), the signal was given. Seconds later, the device detonated, killing Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh — inside one of the most secure compounds in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ affluent northern Tehran residence, which is reserved for high-level meetings and “prominent guests” such as Haniyeh.
The bomb’s placement, angle, and concealment left no margin for survival. Intelligence officials say it was planted roughly two months earlier and required months of planning, surveillance, and even AI-powered precision. When confirmation came that Haniyeh was in the room, Mossad operatives inside Iran remotely triggered the device. The result was instantaneous.
Then, two months later, the Israeli Air Force carried out massive targeted airstrikes in Beirut, sending thick clouds of smoke over the city, including bombs totaling dozens of tons of powerful bunker-penetrating explosives, flattening six buildings. The bombing was not aimed at one point of attack but spread over an area of several hundred square meters above and below the ground.
It was the heaviest attack in Beirut throughout almost a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The target: longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who “is no longer with us” as one Israeli official said shortly thereafter.
So, with all that said, why wasn’t Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei next on the hit list? Why didn’t Israel take the ultimate shot? It surely has the means and capabilities to do so.
According to Bergman, the answer is both practical and philosophical: Israel has never assassinated the leader of a sovereign state, and it didn’t want to set that precedent now.
Even during existential wars decades ago, Israel never assassinated Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, or Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
At first glance, this sounds almost quaint: Israel drawing red lines in an era when its enemies ignore every norm of warfare. Hamas massacred civilians, raped women, burned families alive. Hezbollah rains missiles indiscriminately on Israeli towns. Iran bankrolls all of it. And yet, Israel restrains itself.
But dig deeper, and the logic becomes clear.
First, international law is murky on assassinations. It explicitly bans political killings during peacetime, but what about wartime? Especially a shadow war like this one — fought through proxies, cyberattacks, and long-range missiles? Technically, Israel could argue self-defense. After all, Khamenei is not a symbolic figurehead; he is the architect of Iran’s proxy empire and the man who greenlit October 7th by funding Hamas and Hezbollah for decades.
And yet, precedent is a powerful thing. Once you assassinate a head of state, you normalize the practice for everyone else. If Israel kills Khamenei, what stops Iran — or its allies — from trying to assassinate Israel’s prime minister? What stops Russia from targeting Zelensky? What stops anyone from turning world leaders into fair game?
Israel thrives on deterrence, not chaos. And killing Khamenei might have pushed the world into uncharted territory — a world where leadership decapitation becomes a legitimate tool of statecraft.
There’s another reason: Killing Khamenei doesn’t kill Iran’s regime. Iran’s system is designed for continuity. Khamenei’s death would trigger an emergency process to install a successor, likely someone just as hardline — maybe even more so. Instead of crippling Iran, his assassination could unleash chaos that empowers the Revolutionary Guards, the most radical faction in the country.
Worse, it could backfire diplomatically. For decades, Israel’s greatest weapon has been legitimacy in the eyes of the West. Assassinating a head of state, even one as malign as Khamenei, would erode that legitimacy overnight. Suddenly, Israel would be painted as the aggressor, its defensive war recast as state terrorism. The backlash could have been astronomical, such as a massive regional war, potentially pulling in U.S. forces; diplomatic collapse with Washington, D.C. and Europe; and legitimacy erosion, turning Israel from defender to aggressor in global eyes.
Here’s the irony: Iran openly plots assassinations in the U.S. and Europe, targets Jewish communities abroad, and brags about wanting to annihilate Israel. The world shrugs. Had Israel killed Khamenei, those same capitals that barely blink at Iranian terror would have exploded in outrage. Israel knows this. It knows that in a world obsessed with optics, how you fight matters as much as why you fight.
Paradoxically, keeping Khamenei alive may hurt him more than killing him. Every time Israel kills a top Hamas or Hezbollah leader — and does so inside Tehran or Beirut — it chips away at Iran’s aura of invincibility. Khamenei is alive, but humiliated. His proxies bleed, his capital is penetrated, and his enemies broadcast it to the world. Martyrdom could make him a unifying symbol; humiliation makes him a liability.
What’s more, Bergman’s answer highlights something profound about Israel’s ethos. Despite its reputation as a ruthless operator, Israel is obsessed with boundaries — moral, legal, strategic. It’s a paradox: a country willing to assassinate hundreds of enemy operatives, yet unwilling to cross a line that even its fiercest adversaries wouldn’t think twice about.
And that’s what makes Israel different. Iran and its proxies hide behind human shields, plots genocidal terror, and chants for Israel’s annihilation. Israel, by contrast, agonizes over proportionality, legality, and precedent — even in existential war.
Khamenei lives today not because Israel can’t kill him, but because Israel believes some lines should not be crossed, even when facing an enemy that respects none. Israel’s choice tells us something profound: Survival, for Israel, is not just about eliminating threats. It’s about preserving the moral and strategic boundaries that keep a brutal world from becoming even more lawless.
And in that sense, restraint is not weakness; it’s the ultimate show of strength.
Keeping Khamenei alive lets him bask in the total destruction wrought by Israel on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran itself. Let him wake up everyday to the memory of that humiliation. In a region where honor means everything, Khamenei’s honor has been irreparably destroyed.
In WW2 the U.S. learned that Admiral Yammamoto the brilliant architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor was flying on an inspection mission in the Solomon Islands A mission to shoot Yammamoto down was approved at the highest levels and Yammamoto was shot down His death was viewed as worth more than sinking a few aircraft carriers . The current not so supreme commander knows that the IDF is aware of his every move and that his demise is around the corner one way or the other neither of which would cause me to lose any sleep