From Israel’s perspective, eliminating senior Iranian figures such as Ali Larijani is not about symbolism. It is about dismantling the Islamic Republic’s nervous system.

When a figure like Larijani falls, Israel is not merely removing a senior official. It is removing a node that linked national security, the political apparatus, regime continuity, and strategic coordination. That matters even more against a state that reached a drone production capacity of around 10,000 per month, accumulated 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, and entered this war with a ballistic missile arsenal estimated in the range of roughly 2,500 to 6,000 missiles. Larijani’s elimination is very clear: Israel is going after the men who make the system work.

That is why Israel is striking the brain.

Jerusalem grasped what too many in the West spent years denying: Iran is not merely a nuclear program. It is an integrated architecture of missiles, drones, intelligence, oil, proxy warfare, and domestic repression. Decapitation matters because it forces improvisation, stretches the chain of command, deepens internal paranoia, and degrades coordination among the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the political class, and coercive arms such as the Basij. In military terms, that means slower decision-making. In a war built on missiles and drones, slower decision-making means lower survivability.

But Israel’s objective goes beyond disruption. It is trying to break the regime’s strategic viability.

That means more than killing commanders. It means accelerating regional convergence against Iran. The more aggressive and erratic Tehran becomes, the easier it is to push Sunni Arab states toward deeper cooperation with Israel, even when they prefer to keep that cooperation quiet.

Evidently, Iran is no longer merely an Israeli problem. It is a Gulf problem, an energy threat, and a strategic test to Asian trade routes. A regime that can menace shipping, arm proxies, pressure energy infrastructure, and sit near the nuclear threshold is not a local nuisance. It is a revisionist power. Western diplomats spent years treating Tehran as a difficult negotiating partner. It is a war-making regime with an export model of terror.

And that is where Kharg Island enters the discussion. Anyone serious about defeating the regime has to recognize that Kharg is not just an island. It is the regime’s financial artery. Around 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports move through it, with exports in the range of 1.1 to 1.5 million barrels per day. The island has a storage capacity of about 30 million barrels and holds roughly 18 million barrels in inventory. On the other hand, it also sits in deep water, allowing Iran to load large tankers that cannot operate the same way from the mainland coast.

In plain English, Kharg is where regime finance, military endurance, and global energy leverage meet. Hit it, or seize it, and one is not merely damaging infrastructure. One is squeezing the regime’s cash flow, military budget, and ability to sustain a prolonged war. That also reaches China, because Chinese refiners remain the main buyers of Iranian crude. Any strategy that ignores Kharg is not a strategy. It is performance.

The next question is whether decapitation is sustainable and effective over time.

The answer is yes. It is effective, and it should continue. But by itself it is not enough.

Decapitation works because it strips the regime of accumulated experience, internal cohesion, factional connectivity, and operational coordination. It removes the people who actually know how the machine runs.

There are already signs of severe military degradation. Iran’s prewar missile stockpile was always estimated across a wide range, but the central point is what remains now. Wartime reporting has cited a drop of around 90 percent in operational missile capacity and around 95 percent in suicide-drone attacks. Battlefield numbers should always be handled with caution in real time, but the trend is clear enough: the regime is weaker now than when this campaign began.

Iran is also no longer fighting from a position of strength. Its energy economy is under pressure. Its military has lost senior cadres. Its oil-export system depends on critical chokepoints. Its strategic infrastructure is more exposed than before. That is why Israel’s campaign makes sense: keep decapitating the top while destroying the missile, drone, oil, and command infrastructure below. That is how a tactical campaign becomes a collapse campaign.

Still, the danger is real. If decapitation is not paired with structural dismantlement, the regime can regenerate itself with younger, more radical, and more brutal commanders. That is the classic danger in revolutionary systems. Remove seasoned operators and the vacuum can be filled by men who are less sophisticated, less restrained, and more ideological. Sometimes eliminating the old wolves clears the field for rabid dogs.

Thus, the real answer is not just decapitation or negotiation. The real answer is decapitation, economic asphyxiation, industrial destruction, and internal fracture.

That is the formula most likely to force Tehran to absorb how vulnerable it has become.

And this is where the internal front matters. The IRGC remains the regime’s military backbone, with an estimated force of around 125,000 personnel. Add the Basij force and the wider coercive apparatus, and one sees the machinery that keeps the Islamic Republic alive not only abroad but at home. If that machinery erodes, if repressive figures are removed, and if fear inside the population continues to decline after repeated cycles of protest and mass repression, the regime can enter a phase in which it is no longer losing only at the top. It can begin losing at the base as well.

That is the strategic point too many analysts miss. Regimes like this do not fall merely because their officials die. They fall when their ability to coordinate force, finance violence, and monopolize fear begins to fail at the same time. A regime that cannot command, export, intimidate, or pay its enforcers is not governing. It is rotting.

Evidently, the State of Israel can open the door to collapse. But final collapse requires more than elite targeting. It requires sustained political insurgency inside Iran, fractures within the country’s internal power structure, and relentless pressure on the repressive apparatus. Without that, Iran bleeds. With that, Iran can crack.

Therefore, yes, Israel is right to keep eliminating senior commanders. What would be foolish is to believe that killing leaders automatically means winning the war. Killing leaders buys time. It breaks coordination. It weakens the regime.

Nevertheless, what truly finishes the regime is destroying its ability to produce war, finance it, and repress its own population.

Not containing it. Not managing it. Not bargaining with it.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)