By assassinating the Ayatollah, the United States has set a precedent for future wars that threatens to make those conflicts even more radical and violent than they should be.

 https://x.com/jlippincott_/status/2029231167443030151

Josiah Lippincott

@jlippincott_

Under the old law of war that existed prior to WWII, outright assassination of a foreign head of state was condemned by all civilized powers. The goal was to limit violence by "bracketing" off the government and people as lawful targets. Militaries fight militaries. Governments are off limits. There was a hard headed reason for this. Keeping the opposing government in place made wars less brutal and existential by preserving the continuity and stability of power that made effective peace treaties possible. But now that every enemy of the United States is a "terrorist" there is no ground for negotiation or lasting peace. None of this has anything to do with whether the Ayatollah was a "good" man. Those judgments, between sovereign powers, mean nothing. Everyone thinks he is good and his enemies bad. In light of this reality, the goal should be to limit the destructive effects of those moral claims by removing them as a subject of warfare. By assassinating the Ayatollah, the United States has set a precedent for future wars that threatens to make those conflicts even more radical and violent than they should be. That move was a mistake and we should say as much.

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Thomas Fazi

@battleforeurope

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9h

Very powerful and sobering piece by Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the magazine Russia in Global Politics, on how we have entered the most dangerous age in human history: “The Iranian head of state was not only liquidated by a precision strike — this act was also hailed as

3:23 AM · Mar 5, 2026

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