President Trump has told aides he would back the killing of new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei if he proves unwilling to cede to U.S. demands, such as ending Iran’s nuclear development, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Atlantic: “This is an enormously consequential shift in the foreign-policy tools available to a president. Killing anyone, let alone a dangerous foreign leader, without a trial involves a moral choice. Killing a foreign leader involves a strategic calculation with questionable odds. A regime isn’t a chicken; decapitating it doesn’t necessarily bring about its death after a short dance. Indeed, in the modern age, no police state has died by assassination alone.”
“As killing foreign leaders gets easier for us, harming our leaders also presumably gets easier for others. The international taboo against foreign political assassination has arguably had a stabilizing effect, despite those states—Russia, for example—that have flouted it. To put a fine point on it, however tempting it may be to eliminate troublesome foreign leaders, no policy maker in a democracy wants to spark acts of retaliation that cost the lives of our own leaders in turn.”
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