Is Targeting Iranian Leaders Legal in War?

Intelligence chief Esmaeil Khatib joined on Wednesday an array of Islamic Republic bigwigs killed by Israel since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met his maker on Epic Fury’s first salvo. Is such headhunting legal? Khatib, who was instrumental in exporting the Islamic Republic abroad and prompting regional proxies and terrorist sleeper cells, is the third top regime official Israel targeted within less than 48 hours. National Security Chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani were killed on Tuesday. Larijani was the chief architect of a killing spree that machinegunned more than 30,000 protesters on two nights in January. Soleimani was the top commander in executing that atrocity. Dozens of Basij operators were also killed on Tuesday by drone and missile strikes. While the targeting of such individuals might sound justified morally, detractors are irate. “No one in Iran has immunity, everyone is a target,” the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday in a televised address next to the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir. Earlier Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu indicated that by eliminating the killers of protesters, Israel is creating the conditions for Iranians to overthrow their oppressive regime. Yet is a killing campaign of military and civilian bigwigs legitimate? The American Civil Liberties Union, a critic of President Trump, the war in Iran, and targeted killing, acknowledges on its website that “the U.S. government may use lethal force” against “individuals who are directly participating in hostilities against the United States.”That reasoning has guided American presidents’ decision mostly to kill non-state combatants. President Obama significantly escalated the use of drones for targeting Islamic State officials of all levels during the war of terror. He ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, while the Al Qaeda chief’s successor, Ayman Zawahiri, was killed under President Biden. President Trump, in his first term, defied detractors by ordering the killing of General Qassem Soleimani. The current hunt for Iranian regime operators, though, seems much more extensive than any before it. Officials who were targeted for killing have become so prevalent, that observers are examining which Iranian beigwigs are still alive: Qassem Soleimani’s successor as chief of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has escaped so many assassination rounds that internet satyrists quip that he might have always been an asset of the Mossad. To justify the campaign, American and Israeli officials cite the principle of distinction, one of the most fundamental principles of the laws of war that separates civilians and military targets.“People who are tied to an enemy chain of command are legitimate targets,” a former head of the IDF legal department, Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, tells the Sun. “They don’t necessarily need to wear uniforms,” she adds. Civilians who are part of steering the war, such as intelligence or defense ministers, are fair game, according to this reading. American scholars agree. Two international law professors at Redding university, Marko Milanovic and Michael Schmitt, write that in their view launching Epic Fury was illegal. Yet, they add, once the war started the laws of armed conflict do not exclude certain targeted killings. According to the Islamic Republic’s 1979 constitution, Ali Khamanei was Iran’s top military commander, so “there is general consensus that if a leader is officially designated as the commander-in-chief and is a member of the armed forces under domestic law, that individual qualifies as a member of the armed forces for targeting purposes,” Messrs. Milanovic and Schmitt wrote. The laws of war, though, evolve. What was unacceptable at one point becomes commonplace with developments on the battlefield. Legality is also in the eye of the beholder. The Iranian regime’s allies are increasingly vocal in condemnation of Israel’s targeting of individuals in Iran. “We unequivocally condemn any actions aimed at harming the health of, or indeed murdering or eliminating, members of the leadership of sovereign and independent Iran,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. Ankara agrees. “Israel’s political assassinations, especially those targeting Iranian statesmen and politicians, are truly illegal activities outside the normal laws of war,” its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan said.

Is Targeting Iranian Leaders Legal in War?

Is Targeting Iranian Leaders Legal in War?

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