‘Hit Them Very Hard,’ Trump Says, but Does That Include Targeting Iran’s War Leaders?

President Trump vows to “hit them very hard” and hints at targeting Tehran war leaders, but will his promised escalation turn the tide of war in America’s favor? This week saw several rounds of nightly strikes and the resumption of an American blockade of Iranian ships entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump is threatening a major escalation that by next week would include such targets as Iranian bridges, the country’s electrical grid, and other infrastructure facilities could be fair game.In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Mr. Trump also indicated that some regime leaders who are preventing a negotiated deal could be eliminated. Meanwhile, Tehran regime officials threaten to kill the American president to avenge the death of their leaders. Banners calling for assassinating Mr. Trump and a host of American and Israeli officials, commentators, and legislators, including the late Senator Lindsey Graham, were prominently displayed on each day of last week’s funeral of late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. “The criminal, disgraceful murderers of the martyred Leader, whose names are fully documented from the highest to the lowest ranks, will carry their dream of peaceful death in bed to their graves,” Ali Khamenei’s son and successor, Mujtaba Khamenei, wrote in his X account.The 51-year-old current supreme leader did not attend his father’s funeral and has not appeared or heard from in public since he was reportedly badly injured in the February 28 strike that launched the war.The term “assassination” of foreign leaders has been shunned by American presidents since the 1975 Church Committee report detailing such targeted killings in Cuba, Congo, and elsewhere. At the same time, targeting combatants, including opposing war leaders, is legal in American and international laws. In 2020 Mr. Trump ordered the killing of a top Iranian leader, the IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani’s power at Tehran was largely derived from his ability to create Iran-allied regional terror networks. He also oversaw sleeping cells to assassinate regime opponents in foreign countries. “To Western eyes, Iranian statements on killing Trump might seem like empty rhetoric, but exacting such a revenge can emerge as a top test of for Mujtaba Khamenei’s ideological, religious, and political prowess,” an Iran scholar at Israel’s Misgav Institute, Yossi Mansharof, writes in the Hebrew language newspaper Israel Hayom.What, though, if Mr. Trump ordered a hit on the younger Khamenei first? Such a targeted killing “might hurt the sense of confidence that regime leaders feel now,” Mr. Mansharoff tells the New York Sun. Yet he adds, “the regime is multilayered. If you hit Mujtaba, someone will replace him.”While Mr. Trump claims he no longer trusts the regime, he said Wednesday that Iranians are eager for a deal. The president seems to indicate he would negotiate, but only with the right interlocutors. “I knew the first group for a little while,” Mr. Trump told Fox News, referring to regime men around Ali Khamenei. “They were evil, and they’re no longer with us. I knew the second group… and they were evil, and they’re no longer with us. And the third group, they have some bad ones in there, some very bad ones in there, and I think they’re the ones that are stopping a deal.”Some at Tehran, the president said, “want to make a deal, but every time they make a deal, they break it. They don’t want to die. People don’t want to die. You better make a deal” or “you’re not going to have anybody left.”The Islamic Republic has long relied on Washington insiders who make a sharp distinction between regime “moderates” and “hardliners.” Sensing such an ideological rift might guide Mr. Trump’s eagerness to seek a deal. Yet the president increasingly cites January’s mass killing of Iranian protesters. Mr. Trump initially vowed to regime opponents that “help’s on the way” but he never made good on that promise. If assisting Iranians to overturn the regime is the goal, though, killing top regime officials is unlikely to be much help.To turn the war tide, Mr. Mansharof says, “America needs to hit oppression centers. Strike checkpoints, disrupt IRGC, Basij, and police ability to operate in public. Make them defect to the anti-regime side.”

‘Hit Them Very Hard,’ Trump Says, but Does That Include Targeting Iran’s War Leaders?

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