For decades, the United States moved from covert assassination plots to openly embracing assassination or “targeted killing” as policy. Now, in its war with Iran, that evolution is reaching its most dangerous phase.

On March 17th and 18th, the United States and Israel assassinated three senior Iranian government officials in targeted air strikes: Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council; Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Basij domestic security forces; and Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s Intelligence Minister.

The missile that killed Ali Larijani also demolished an apartment building and killed more than a hundred people. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces were now authorized to assassinate any senior Iranian official whenever they can, and they have continued to do so, bringing the number of Iranian officials assassinated in the past year to at least seventy.

The assassination of Ali Larijani is a blow to the already fraught chances for a negotiated peace between Iran and the United States and Israel. Ali Larijani was an experienced, pragmatic senior official who had played leading roles in negotiations with the US and other world powers since 2005.

What was once covert, controversial, and constrained is now overt, normalized, and defended.

Larijani had degrees in math and computer science, attended the revered seminary in Qom, and fought in the Iran-Iraq War, rising to the rank of brigadier-general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. After the war, he managed Iran’s state broadcasting service, earned a doctorate in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran, and wrote three books on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, before entering politics and government in 2005. In 2024, Larijani wrote a book on political philosophy, titled Reason and Tranquility in Governance.

If the US hoped to make peace and restore relations with Iran, Ali Larijani would have been a potential negotiating partner. The decision to assassinate Larijani two weeks into this war suggests that US leaders had no interest in negotiations.

Another possibility is even more chilling. Israeli leaders may have viewed Larijani as a potential off-ramp and deliberately eliminated him to ensure the war continues.

That killing was followed by an unprecedented Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field—the largest in the world and a shared resource with Qatar. Iran retaliated with missile strikes on energy infrastructure across Israel and the Gulf. In Qatar, damage to the Ras Laffan LNG terminal—one of the world’s most critical gas hubs—could take years and billions of dollars to repair.

As global energy markets reeled, US officials confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the South Pars attack had been coordinated with Washington, contradicting denials from President Trump.

The pattern is unmistakable. As one analyst put it, Israel appears to be escalating deliberately—eliminating moderates within Iran while striking critical infrastructure—to provoke a wider regional war that leaves no room for de-escalation.

Analysts debate how much Israel is driving this escalation and how much US officials are fully aligned. But an imperial power cannot outsource responsibility. As Harry Truman’s famous desk sign declared: The buck stops here.

In its alliance with Israel, the United States has normalized the systematic assassination of foreign leaders—from Palestine, and Lebanon, to Syria, Yemen and now Iran. This is not new. In 2020, President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that had joined with US forces to fight the Islamic State.

Yet assassination is explicitly prohibited under US law. Executive Order 12333 states clearly: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire........

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