The United States and Israel have made targeted killings a cornerstone of their campaign against Iran, operating on the theory that eliminating leaders will degrade Iranian capabilities and deter further action. That theory, a new analysis suggests, has not survived contact with reality.

In a Foreign Affairs analysis, Narges Bajoghli of Johns Hopkins SAIS argued that Iran anticipated decapitation strikes decades ago and built its military command structure specifically to withstand them, "Hvylya" reports.

Tehran had watched what happened to its adversaries' enemies: the targeting of Saddam Hussein's leadership, the assassination of Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, the killing of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Learning from these precedents, the regime deliberately decentralized military command, distributed political authority across autonomous regional nodes, and cultivated multiple potential successors at every level.

But the more troubling consequence for Washington, Bajoghli argued, is who has stepped into the dead commanders' shoes. Unlike the older generation - leaders who carried the memory of catastrophic losses in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and exercised caution as a result - the replacements are younger officers who served alongside Hezbollah, fought Americans in Iraq, and participated in the Syrian civil war. They emerged from those conflicts believing they had helped defeat the most powerful militaries on earth. "They do not share the caution of the older generation of leaders, who remembered the catastrophic human costs of the Iran-Iraq War," Bajoghli wrote.

That belief shapes their appetite for risk. These commanders face the same institutional pressure all new leaders face: the need to prove themselves. Combined with combat confidence and none of the restraint inherited from the Iran-Iraq War generation, the decapitation campaign may accelerate the very escalation it was meant to prevent. If the Islamic Republic survives this war, Bajoghli contended, postwar Iran will be led by commanders who believe they defeated the United States and Israel - making it more revisionist, not more moderate.

"Hvylya" previously covered how oil prices reacted when Washington briefly suspended strikes on Iran.