Israel has shared fresh intelligence with Washington, warning that the Islamic Republic is pursuing a new plot to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. Former CIA director and retired Gen. David Petraeus has publicly described the warning as one that “should be taken very seriously.” These developments are not isolated incidents. They are the latest evidence of a pattern that American policymakers can no longer afford to dismiss.
For decades, Tehran has fused religious decrees, state propaganda, intelligence operations and proxy terrorism into a single strategic doctrine. Yet despite repeated assassination plots, public incitement and official calls for violence against American leaders, U.S. institutions have too often treated these acts as diplomatic crises rather than recognizing them for what they represent: state-sponsored Islamist terrorism.
Until the United States is willing to name the threat accurately, it cannot defeat it.
In the midst of the Iranian regime’s deceptive and theatrical negotiations with the United States, 66 members of Iran’s Assembly of Experts issued a statement declaring U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mahdur al-dam—individuals whose blood may lawfully be shed under their interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence.
In the days surrounding the state funeral of Tehran’s slain dictator, Ali Khamenei, the regime reinforced that message in public. Posters displayed in the streets called for the deaths of Trump and Netanyahu, while senior Iranian officials, speaking before television cameras, repeatedly renewed calls for “revenge” and invoked the killing of both leaders. Rather than remaining confined to religious rhetoric, the message became part of the regime’s official public narrative.
They proclaimed that killing either leader had become a religious obligation for anyone who could gain access to them. Simultaneously, they called for removing the nuclear file from negotiations and halting any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. In the lexicon of this ideology of brutality and barbarism, a person declared mahdur al-dam no longer enjoys the sanctity of life, and shedding his blood is considered permissible.
The recent statement by the Assembly of Experts calling for the assassination of Trump and Netanyahu will not cure the growing regional isolation of Tehran.
The regime’s growing reliance on public threats, revenge rhetoric and carefully orchestrated displays of revolutionary unity reveals something far more significant than military defiance. Governments that increasingly substitute intimidation for public consent are often attempting to compensate for a profound crisis of political legitimacy. The louder the threats become, the more they reflect insecurity rather than confidence.
Therefore, the repeated public calls for the assassination of Trump and Netanyahu represent far more than inflammatory rhetoric. They reflect an official attempt to transform a religious decree into a public and political message, broadcast through state institutions, ceremonies and propaganda. More importantly, they represent a deliberate effort to manufacture legitimacy through fear, spectacle, and ideological mobilization at a time when the regime’s domestic credibility continues to erode.
During the final days of June, the United States launched a multi-layered campaign against the Islamic Republic, combining military, intelligence, psychological and political messaging. Yet Washington’s strategic objective appears to be focused on dismantling the operational and military capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and, perhaps more importantly, breaking the regime’s capacity for terror and coercion within its command structure in Tehran.
An even broader objective may be to compel the regime’s core leadership to accept a new political order in the post-Khamenei era, even if the regime’s most powerful figures—Ahmad Vahidi, Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei—remain in power.
Thus far, however, progress has been limited. Iran still exercises control over the Strait of Hormuz, the regime remains largely unchanged despite Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination in February, and there is no credible indication that Tehran has abandoned its nuclear ambitions.
By interfering with navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the regime has made itself a direct threat to the freedom of international commerce. As a result, U.S. military operations to protect global trade may now be assuming, from Trump’s perspective, greater strategic importance than the nuclear issue itself.
The United States and CENTCOM have targeted the regime’s radar installations, air-defense systems and surveillance infrastructure. That was no coincidence. The apparent objective was to blind the regime’s military sensors, isolate its command structure, sever communications and degrade its principal operational centers. The campaign evokes strategic patterns previously seen in Iraq, Serbia and Libya.
Alongside these developments, Trump’s remarks were particularly revealing, conveying multiple strategic messages. His message was likely directed not only toward Tehran but also toward Russia, China and the IRGC. Trump has signaled that, should the conflict escalate further, the United States would continue climbing the ladder of escalation.
These limited reciprocal strikes may not eliminate the channels of negotiation or dismantle the notorious lobbying networks that continue to defend the Islamic Republic in Washington. Yet Washington is gradually concluding that negotiating with the Islamic Republic resembles teaching chess to a gorilla. No matter how carefully the rules are explained, the game never begins because the other side rejects the very principles on which it is played—an exercise that is both futile and grotesque.
Unless Washington demonstrates the political will to strike directly at the regime’s highest decision-making centers and fundamentally alter the balance of power inside Iran, this strategic challenge will persist.
Should the Trump administration ultimately conclude that the regime’s critical governing infrastructure must remain untouched and should Israel not be given sufficient latitude to remove notorious figures such as Rezaei, Mohseni-Ejei, Zolghadr, Vahidi and others from the political stage—and bring an end to the empty theater surrounding Mojtaba Khamenei’s projected leadership—then this failed and deeply destructive political performance will simply continue.
It is becoming increasingly evident that containing the Middle East crisis without the fall of Tehran is neither feasible nor realistic.
Washington is gradually coming to the conclusion that negotiating with the Islamic Republic resembles teaching chess to a gorilla.
The emerging Middle East is witnessing the rise of two principal regional powers: Saudi Arabia and Israel. The strategic fingerprints of Trump and Netanyahu upon this new regional architecture are unmistakable.
The remnants of the Iranian regime continue to imagine themselves as a regional power, yet the spider-web architecture of the Shi’ite Islamist caliphate built in Tehran is steadily unraveling.
The Islamic Republic is suffering from an unprecedented intelligence crisis, marked by widespread distrust, paranoia and fears of infiltration by American and Israeli agents. The country’s internal condition remains chaotic. Distrust has spread throughout the state’s institutions, while political and security instability now permeates the regime itself.
There was a time when Khamenei issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of Trump and Netanyahu. He reportedly sought to dispatch terrorist operatives into the United States and Israel, as well as activate sleeper cells affiliated with the Tehran regime inside both countries. But what became of that effort? He ultimately met a humiliating fate, much like IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States in 2020.
The final whistle for this regime has already been blown, because no regime can indefinitely substitute fear for legitimacy. When threats become the language of governance, they cease to project strength and instead expose a government’s deepest vulnerability: the loss of legitimacy. Whether or not the international community continues to accommodate the Islamic Republic, the structural forces driving its decline will remain. Regimes do not survive on coercion alone.
Ironically, when someone tries to warn the FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security or even the CIA about the Islamic Republic’s covert terrorist networks, the first interrogation is often directed at the whistleblower, rather than the terrorists. By the time bureaucracy finishes questioning the messenger, the threat itself may already have moved on.
In reality, it must be said that Washington has yet to study the Shi’ite mullahs’ playbook. Many in the American political establishment still appear unwilling to recognize that Islamist terrorists are neither trustworthy nor reliable partners. They cannot be used as instruments of policy, because any form of engagement with them ultimately serves only to legitimize them.
Meanwhile, Iran itself remains deeply unstable. The country is in a state of profound unrest, and the pressure within Iranian society continues to build toward a boiling point. For the younger generation and what many observers regard as the majority of Iranian society, only one serious alternative for Iran’s future has clearly emerged: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. Yet the difficult journey from the collapse of the current regime to the ballot box will almost certainly be long, perilous, and filled with uncertainty. It is a path that could, tragically, descend into bloodshed.
Increasingly, reports and speculation suggest that even Mojtaba Khamenei may no longer be alive, while rival factions within Tehran appear to be turning against one another in a bitter power struggle. Iran is entering a period that is likely to be marked by profound turbulence and instability.
The greater tragedy, however, is that Washington still shows little genuine determination to pursue a policy of regime change. The continued willingness to accommodate or tolerate Islamist terrorism, rather than confront it decisively, will undoubtedly stand as one of the unforgivable failures of 21st-century history.
