The session–attended by the heads of all three government branches—President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, as well as other top Iranian security and military officials, was held in a fortified underground facility in western Tehran.
Pezeshkian was wounded in the attack.
Iranian officials later claimed that Israel received intelligence from inside sources revealing the location of the meeting.
It’s shocking that this outrageous plot escaped much of the global media at the time. The videos of the massive exchanges of missile fire between Israel and Iran seem to have crowded such a major story off the front page.
Despite massive US bombs intended to seal off air vents and prevent escape, the participants were able to exit via a secret tunnel:
The strike was carried out during a meeting attended by the heads of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government along with other senior officials…
The session was taking place in the lower level of a government facility in western Tehran when the attack started, Fars reported. The building’s entrances and exits were hit by six missiles to block escape routes and cut off air flow.
Electricity was severed following the explosions, but Iranian officials managed to escape through a pre-designated emergency hatch…
The news agency said authorities launched an investigation into the possible presence of Israeli spies given the accuracy of the intelligence the “enemy” possessed.
Both assassination schemes broke numerous precedents for diplomatic and military strategy. It is rare in the history of human conflict to murder the entire top echelon of an enemy leadership during hostilities. In the past, this may have been impossible due to practical limitations. While today, munitions travel over great distances to strike a target with great precision. Modern surveillance methods can also infiltrate enemy communication systems to offer intelligence enabling destruction of such assets. One can see why such capabilities would be both desirable and tempting: a nation can, at a single blow, wipe out the entire leadership of an enemy state. Thereby mounting a crippling blow and destroying an enemy’s will to resist; or at least degrading its capabilities.
Nevertheless, this is a dangerous precedent offering questionable benefit in the longer-range strategic outlook. For example, such an attack may be effective against an authoritarian enemy, in which killing one individual may decapitate its command and control system. But it will not work against Iran, which has a decentralized political-military structure, in which personnel redundancy is intrinsic. You may kill one or dozens, but there are scores or hundreds trained and ready to take their place.
Further, unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the Middle East definitely does not stay there. Just as Israel maintains a multi-billion weapons and surveillance export regime, countries look to Israel for “new and improved” ways to fight wars and maintain social control. Such mega-assassination plots, despite these two failures, will become the future of global warfare. It’s no longer outside the realm of possibility that Ukraine would take out Putin and his military command; or Russia do the same to Zelensky and his leadership cohort.
While modern warfare has grown increasingly lethal, there have hitherto been certain strategic limitations. No longer. Where all limits have been eliminated, chaos will rule. One can even imagine a scenario in which the taboo against use of nuclear weapons is broken. Israeli leaders have long threatened Iran with such a prospect. But these have been bombast, meant for psychological effect both against Iran, and for internal consumption. But we are now in a world in which everything is not only possible, but assured.
Bibi lobbies Trump for Iran attack
This past week, Bibi Netanyahu enjoyed his fifth visit this year, to the White House. One of the prime orders of business for the Israeli leader was obtaining Trump’s approval of a second assault on Iran, to which Trump assented. It is not a matter of if, but when this happens. It will be sooner, rather than later.
Just as Trump’s coup in Venezuela has no military strategic significance, Netanyahu’s attacks against Iran also have none. Despite their boasting to the contrary, neither can destroy the enemy’s ability to fight. Neither can win in any conventional sense. It’s not even clear that is their goal. They are purely political and meant for internal political advantage. Both leaders are deeply unpopular and wounded by scandal. Both harbor grievances against internal and external enemies. Both seek revenge. Both have grandiose visions of their own power. All this is a recipe for perpetual unrest, instability and war. With the ultimate goal of maintaining power, rather than winning decisive or climactic victory.
Trump’s boasts that he now “runs” Venezuela and “owns” its newly installed president; and that he will give free rein to US oil companies to resume their historical theft of the country’s oil. These are delusions. He now joins the ranks of international war criminals like Putin and Netanyahu, who have each mounted coups against, and invasions of their neighbors. Oh, the irony of that FIFA peace prize!
Such leaders with sociopathic, megalomaniacal personalities, who are willing to break such taboos, could easily set off a tripwire leading to a nuclear war. This is not a nightmare scenario. It is something one must anticipate. Something one can predict will happen. When it does, it will be to the eternal shame and damnation of the human race.
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