US planning for Iran includes targeting individual leaders

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US military planning for a potential strike on Iran has advanced to include options for targeting individual leaders—an explicit move from state-to-state deterrence toward personalized “decapitation” warfare. Two US officials told Reuters that plans could include strikes on individuals and even pathways aimed at regime change, should President Donald Trump order it, according to the Japan Times.

That is a notable escalation not only in operational ambition but in the legal and political framing of conflict. Targeting named individuals—rather than discrete military facilities—turns war planning into something closer to a standing assassination menu. The US has done this before in practice, but the normalization is the headline: it is being discussed as a policy option in a major-power confrontation, not as an exceptional counterterrorism measure.

The Hill reports Trump has publicly floated a “limited strike” while still expressing hope for a nuclear deal. Yahoo, summarizing similar remarks, notes an Iranian diplomat claiming a proposed agreement is imminent even as Washington issues threats. The choreography is familiar: diplomacy is kept alive long enough to claim the moral high ground, while military options are broadened until the “limited” label becomes mostly a branding exercise.

Decapitation strategies also have a habit of lowering the threshold for retaliation. If leaders are fair game, the opponent’s incentives shift toward pre-emption, redundancy, and asymmetric response. Iran has repeatedly warned it could hit US bases in the region and target Israel if attacked; those threats become more credible when the US is openly considering strikes that look like attempts to disable command structures.

The danger is not merely escalation abroad but institutionalization at home. Personalized targeting encourages perpetual, low-visibility conflict because it can be sold as “surgical” and therefore politically cheap—no mobilization, no declared war, no clear victory condition. Yet it expands the set of triggers for retaliation and invites proxy warfare across the region.

Legally, the US would likely argue such strikes fall under self-defense or an authorization framework, but the international-law problem is obvious: killing officials of a sovereign state outside an active battlefield strains the distinction between armed conflict and extrajudicial killing. Once that line is blurred for Iran, it is blurred for everyone.

The practical outcome is a Middle East where “deterrence” becomes a rotating list of people, and “de-escalation” becomes a press release. In that world, the only stable constituency is the one that always wins: the security apparatus that never has to admit the mission is permanent.