作者：斯蒂芬·科林森
4小时前
发布时间：2026年3月19日，美国东部时间凌晨12:00
中东
以色列将其对伊朗最高领导层的暗杀行动比作斩断章鱼的头部。
这场现代战争中前所未有的行动始于除掉最高领袖阿里·哈梅内伊。周三，以色列在打击政权的“触手”时，杀死了情报部长伊斯梅尔·哈蒂卜，而该国的事实上的领导人阿里·拉里贾尼在前一天也已身亡。
以色列此前曾暗杀过恐怖组织头目，包括真主党和哈马斯的领导人——甚至还在叙利亚等地暗杀过伊朗官员。
但现在，通过升级针对国家间直接战争中领导人的行动，以色列正在彰显其军事实力，并表明其敌人无处可藏。这也反映了新的精确制导武器和出色的情报渗透能力所带来的作战范围的不断扩大。
最新的袭击代表了一种试图改变德黑兰政治现实的努力，与此同时，数千次空袭以及美军的打击正在摧毁这个伊斯兰共和国用导弹和无人机威胁外部世界的能力。
暗杀外国领导人长期以来被视为违反美国和国际法的行为。许多批评者认为，伊朗战争本身就是对正在迅速瓦解的基于规则的全球体系的侮辱。
但对于美国和以色列这样的强国而言，斩首政权的打击行动具有吸引力，因为它们希望通过这种方式缩短战争、削弱镇压性政权并避免陷入泥潭。
暗杀领导人可能会通过阻止低级别官员冒着“死亡判决”而不敢上任来削弱政权。
然而，尽管此类暗杀具有强大的象征意义，但其长期的政治和战略影响尚不清楚。一方面，殉道精神已深深植根于伊朗伊斯兰共和国的意识形态中。
因此，虽然除掉高层领导可能会缩短战争，但也可能煽动复仇情绪，同时关闭外交缓和的途径——从而使战争拖得更久。
据报道，伊朗领导人在战争前已将权力下放，以预见到自己会成为目标。因此，清除神职人员和军事高层并不一定能摧毁政权。而一旦开始执行“铲除每一个新领导人”的计划，这可能导致近乎永久的战争。
长期针对外国核心人物的记录
战时暗杀外国领导人的想法并非新事物。
二战期间，英国曾考虑并放弃了多个刺杀阿道夫·希特勒的计划。情报工作和严格的行动安全措施意味着据称纳粹刺杀温斯顿·丘吉尔首相和其他盟军领导人的计划都失败了。根据国会报告和20世纪70年代至90年代的证词，中央情报局曾多次试图杀死已故的古巴独裁者菲德尔·卡斯特罗。
美国历届政府都曾对基地组织和伊斯兰国等非国家组织的领导人采取军事行动，包括猎杀奥萨马·本·拉登。在其第一任期内，特朗普下令在巴格达机场杀死伊朗安全负责人卡西姆·苏莱曼尼——伊朗最重要的领导人之一。
2003年，美国在入侵伊拉克初期试图杀死伊拉克独裁者萨达姆·侯赛因，但失败了。
在冲突后期，美国情报分析人员制作了一副“扑克牌”，为美国希望捕获或杀死的政权领导人分配价值。萨达姆的儿子乌代和库赛是红桃A和梅花A，直到他们在枪战中死亡。他们的父亲，黑桃A，在其家乡提克里特的一个洞穴中被发现后，后来被绞死。
但导致制作“扑克牌”的那种傲慢，更多被人铭记的是其狂妄自大而非成功的政权斩首案例。这暴露了华盛顿的一个误解：认为清除关键人物就能带来伊拉克的民主。相反，一场可怕的叛乱爆发，美国花了数年时间才脱身。
现在的问题是，美国的新战争是否会通过杀死高层领导人来带来解放和稳定。
虽然美国和以色列中和伊朗军事威胁的战略似乎造成了巨大破坏，并且可能在战术上取得成功，但到目前为止，还没有迹象表明这个伊斯兰革命政权正在崩溃。
特朗普在伊朗问题上的目标和开战理由可能尚不明确。但内塔尼亚胡的目标几十年来一直是公开的：摧毁他认为伊朗对以色列及其政权构成生存威胁的势力。
以色列将其对伊朗领导人的攻击视为自卫，认为伊朗是一个由伊斯兰革命卫队指挥官领导的恐怖国家，而以色列长期以来一直与其处于紧张对峙状态。
伊朗没有屈服，而是以挑衅回应了高层领导人被杀的事实。例如，它向特拉维夫发射了弹道导弹，这符合其扩大战争以报复拉里贾尼的誓言。
内塔尼亚胡还比特朗普更具体地辩称，对伊朗领导人的袭击是直接试图煽动反革命。
“我们正在削弱这个政权，希望给伊朗人民一个推翻它的机会，”内塔尼亚胡在宣布拉里贾尼死亡时说。“这不会一蹴而就，也不会轻而易举。但如果我们坚持下去，我们将给他们机会掌握自己的命运。”
但也有其他不太乐观的可能性。为死去的领导人复仇的欲望可能导致他们的继任者加强对平民的镇压——而特朗普曾誓言要保护这些平民。如果斩首政权的行动灾难性地成功，政府崩溃可能会导致国家分裂和内战。
苦难的神学
一些专家认为，领导人暗杀不太可能促进积极的政治变革。知识分子历史学家巴德尔·赛义夫在周三中东研究所的电话会议上说，伊朗领导人可能会加强他们的挑衅姿态。“我的意思是，对他们来说，暗杀——他们会接受（它）并以此为借口。”他补充道：“这个政权靠苦难的神学而生存，所以暗杀越多，他们会变得越顽强，经验不足的人会被推到更高的职位。”
乔治·华盛顿大学中东研究项目主任西娜·阿佐迪告诉CNN的贝基·安德森，拉里贾尼的被杀可能适得其反。“当然，从实际角度看，这对以色列人来说是一个成就。但我担心这最终会导致……政权的僵化，而不是崩溃，”阿佐迪说。
特朗普在战争初期就承认，清除关键领导人可能会阻碍政治过渡的机会。
“这次袭击非常成功，它消灭了大多数候选人，”特朗普告诉美国广播公司新闻的乔纳森·卡尔。“我们原本考虑的人都已经死了。第二或第三名也死了。”
消灭领导人可能还会消除谈判的动力，或者消除伊朗人可能需要与特朗普达成“协议”的专业知识。
“美国支持以色列铲除伊朗政府中的务实派人物，”普林斯顿大学近东研究系助理教授丹尼尔·谢菲尔德说。“通过外交手段想象这场战争的终结——这非常困难。”
如果暗杀确实关闭了战争的潜在缓和途径，它们将加深复杂性，阻碍特朗普定义战争如何结束的能力。
最终，斩首领导层的策略，其成功与否并不取决于杀死了谁，而取决于留下了什么。
中东
Analysis: How Israel killing leaders in Iran could complicate Trump’s search for an endgame | CNN Politics
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
4 hr ago
PUBLISHED Mar 19, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
The Middle East
Israel compares its assassinations of the top level of Iran’s leadership to severing the head of an octopus.
A campaign unmatched in modern warfare started by taking out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As it targets the tentacles of the regime, Israel on Wednesday killed intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, a day after the country’s de facto leader Ali Larijani also perished.
Israel has previously killed leaders of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas — and even Iranian officials in places such as Syria.
But now, by escalating against leaders in a direct state-on-state war, it is making a statement of military might and showing that its enemies have nowhere to hide. It is also reflecting the evolving reach of combat enabled by new precision weapons and remarkable intelligence penetration.
The latest strikes represent an attempt to change the political realities in Tehran while thousands of air attacks, alongside US forces, devastate the Islamic Republic’s capacity to threaten the outside world with missiles and drones.
Assassinations of foreign leaders have long been considered illegal under US and international law. Many critics view the Iran war itself as an insult to a fast-eroding rules-based global system.
But strikes to decapitate the regime have an attraction to more powerful states like the United States and Israel as they seek to shorten fighting, wound repressive regimes and dodge quagmires.
Killing leaders might weaken the regime by deterring lower-ranking officials from stepping into jobs that come with a death sentence.
But while such assassinations hold powerful symbolism, their long-term political and strategic impacts are less clear. For one thing, martyrdom is embedded in the ideology of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
So, while eliminating a top seam of leadership might shorten the war, it might also incite vengeance while closing diplomatic off-ramps — dragging the war on longer.
Since Iran’s leaders are reported to have devolved power before the war in anticipation that they’d become targets, there is no certainty that wiping out clerics and military brass will destroy the regime. And committing to a program to eliminate every new leader who emerges to replace a martyred superior could lead to almost perpetual warfare.
A long record of targeting foreign kingpins
The idea of assassinating foreign leaders in wartime is not new.
Britain considered and abandoned several plots to kill Adolf Hitler in World War II. Intelligence work and tight operational security meant purported Nazi plots to kill Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other allied leaders failed. The CIA tried multiple times to kill the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, according to congressional reports and testimony from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Successive US administrations sent the military after non-state al Qaeda and ISIS leaders, including Osama bin Laden. And in his first term, Trump ordered the killing of Iranian security chief Qasem Soleimani — one of the most important Iranian leaders — at Baghdad airport.
In 2003, the United States tried and failed to kill Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein at the start of the US invasion.
Later in the conflict, US intelligence analysts created a pack of cards to assign value to regime leaders whom Washington wanted captured or killed. Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were the ace of hearts and ace of clubs until they died in a gun battle. Their father, the ace of spades, discovered hiding in a hole in his hometown of Tikrit, was later hanged.
But the swagger that led to the card deck is remembered more for hubris than as an example of successful regime decapitation. It revealed a misperception in Washington that the elimination of key figures would lead to a democratic Iraq. Instead, a horrendous insurgency erupted that took the US years to escape.
The question now is whether America’s new war will create liberation and stability by killing top leaders.
While the US and Israeli strategy of neutralizing the Iranian military threat appears to have caused immense damage and may be an operational success, there are so far no signs the Islamic revolutionary regime is collapsing.
Trump’s goals in Iran and rationale for the war might be ill-defined. But Netanyahu’s have been no secret for decades: the destruction of what he regards as Iran’s existential threat to Israel and its regime.
Israel frames its attacks on Iranian leaders as self-defense against what it regards as a terrorist state led by commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with whom it’s long been locked in a simmering war.
Instead of capitulating, Iran reacted to the killing of senior regime leaders with defiance. It, for example, targeted Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles in line with a vow to widen the war to avenge Larijani.
Netanyahu also argues — much more specifically than Trump — that the attacks on the Iranian leaders are a direct attempt to incite a counter-revolution.
“We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it,” Netanyahu said in announcing Larijani’s death. “It will not happen all at once, and it will not happen easily. But if we persist, we will give them the chance to take their destiny into their own hands.”
But there are alternative, less hopeful scenarios. A desire to avenge lost leaders could cause their successors to intensify repression against civilians Trump once vowed to protect. If regime decapitation is a catastrophic success, a governmental collapse could unleash the splintering of the state and civil war.
A theology of suffering
Some experts think it’s unlikely leader assassinations will promote positive political change. Bader Al-Saif, an intellectual historian, said on a Middle East Institute conference call Wednesday that Iranian leaders could reinforce their defiance. “I mean, to them, assassination — they’ll take (it) on.” He added: “This regime thrives on a theology of suffering, so the more assassinations, the more resilient they’ll become and lesser experienced individuals will be bumped up into newer ranks.”
Sina Azodi, director of the Middle East Studies program at George Washington University, told CNN’s Becky Anderson that Larijani’s killing might prove counterproductive. “From a practical standpoint, of course, it’s an achievement for the Israelis. But I’m afraid that it will ultimately lead to a … hardening of the regime and not the collapse of the regime,” Azodi said.
Trump admitted earlier in the war that the removal of key leaders might hamper the chances of a political transition.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
Wiping out leaders might also remove an incentive for negotiation or the expertise Iranians might need to reach a “deal” with Trump.
The United States “has supported Israel in eliminating pragmatist figures within the Iranian government,” said Daniel Sheffield, an assistant professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. “To imagine an endgame to this war through diplomacy — it’s very difficult.”
If assassinations do close potential off-ramps to the war, they deepen complications that are thwarting Trump’s capacity to define how it ends.
Ultimately, the strategy of decapitating the leadership will be judged less by who it kills than what it leaves behind.
The Middle East
