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US and Israel’s strategy to kill Iran’s top figures may prove counterproductive

Israel’s decision to authorise its military to kill any senior Iranian official on its assassination list has raised significant new questions about its so-called decapitation strategy – and what it is intended to achieve. Privately, Israeli officials have briefed their US counterparts that in the event of an uprising, Iran’s opposition would be “slaughtered” . That appears to be at odds with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to pursue regime change by targeting senior figures in Iran’s political and security apparatus. Even before the outbreak of full scale war, however, Iran experts and analysts – and some former Israeli officials – were sceptical that Iran’s clerical regime could be toppled by such strikes. So far the targeted attacks have killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei, security chief Ali Larijani and intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, among others. At the heart of the issue is the structure and resilience of Iran’s regime – and how both the regime and the Iranian public respond to such attacks. Before the US and Israel launched their attacks three weeks ago, experts had assessed that the regime was stagnating in the face of protests and that some kind of change appeared inevitable. That dynamic has now been changed. “This isn’t a personalised regime,” said Sanam Vakil, an Iran expert at Chatham House. “There are institutional layers under every individual and I suspect that the response to decapitation strikes would be to simply to promoting from within – although that risks bringing up unknown and untested individuals. “Given the Israeli success rate you could imagine there are perhaps lower rank individuals not so amenable to moving up the system in what is dangerous work.” Thus far, Vakil does not judge Israel’s decapitation strategy to have been successful. “At the moment it seems to be buying time, and I’m not sure what the US is trying to achieve, but there exists a potential for air to be blown back into the system to rejuvenate a regime that was becoming a spent force where the people moving up have seen their mentors and their bosses and family members killed. “It is not an approach that produces Jeffersonian democrats but hardened resistance fighters. It breeds more resistance,” she said. Israel’s history of assassination does not point to much success. Over the years Israel has killed numerous senior leaders in Hamas and Hezbollah, including Hamas’s spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah. Yet while Israeli campaigns have diminished those groups, both have rebounded. Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, is another sceptic, citing the example of Hamas, which “as a political movement, absorbed its martyrs and lives to fight another day. “Unfortunately meaningful improvement through decapitation is unlikely,” he wrote in a recent post. “Each situation is unique, and each involves an element of chance. Still, the track record for advancing ambitious political goals — which is what the United States has — through a limited military effort is poor. While he cites the example of the killing of Osama bin Laden as an example of how a non-state group can be degraded significantly by the removal of a leader, Alterman says the Israeli attempt to decapitate a state is “unprecedented.” “One of common myths in the US government post-9/11 and before the invasion of Iraq was that you simply had to remove the ‘dirty dozen’ [of senior regime figures] in Iraq,” he told the Guardian. “I thought it was ill-conceived then and ill-conceived now. An issue that has not got sufficient attention is that if you eliminate the people who have credibility with the nasty guys there is nobody with influence to make the nasty guys stop. “It also feels like the resilience of the regime is being underestimated. Maybe it is possible to create an internal split, but I don’t know any evidence of moderate democrats waiting in wings.” For Alterman the “most likely outcome” of the decapitation strategy “is an internally unstable Iran” that is more likely to carry out acts of violence outside borders, either via cyber warfare, proxies or terrorism. Complicating the issue, is that a successful popular uprising is not even necessarily the most likely outcome of a destabilised regime. In a January essay for American magazine Foreign Affairs, Afshon Ostovar, a Middle East expert at the Naval Postgraduate School predicted that any coup would more likely come from within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – the strongest actor in the country – and would be aimed at preserving existing institutions, a potential dynamic that still holds. Steven Simon, a security expert at Dartmouth College, and former National Security Council staff, wrote in War on the Rocks: “The scenario that deserves more attention than it is getting[is] not Iranian collapse, but Iranian persistence; wounded, revanchist, and ungovernable by the tools that won the war.” “There also something perverse about this,” adds Vakil. “What Israel and the US are pursuing, that makes me so uncomfortable, is that there is no agency or choice or justice for Iranians in this process.”

As Trump shows lack of direction on Iran, even Badenoch distances herself

When is a U-turn definitely a U-turn? To the consternation of politicians through the ages, this is rarely something within their control, but decided instead by the herd. And thus it is with Kemi Badnoch over Iran and Donald Trump. The Conservative leader would very much like it to be known that she had not changed her stance on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, or on the US president. This did not, however, prevent Keir Starmer from attacking her for a second consecutive week at prime minister’s questions about a subject where he and his advisers clearly believe Badenoch has found herself on the wrong side of public opinion. At the end of last month, when the first bombs and missiles fell on Iran, Badenoch was adamant that Starmer should have let the US use UK airbases for the pre-emptive attack, one that Starmer was advised most likely breached international law. The Tory leader said she stood “with our allies in the US and Israel as they take on the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its vile regime”. Ten days later, as it became increasingly apparent that the US campaign had no apparently agreed goal or endpoint, and after polls showed steady opposition to it among the British public, Badenoch denied that she had wanted the UK to take part. “I said that we support their actions. I never said we should join,” she told an interview, to some head-scratching by pundits and MPs in response. Asked to clarify a couple of days later, Badenoch’s spokesperson said, even more gnomically: “We are at war. The difference is, we’re not joining the war. We’re in the war.” Badenoch’s position, as explained by her allies, is that she never wanted actual UK involvement in the strikes. Once Iran began retaliating, they say, her only point of difference from Starmer was to call for UK military efforts to seek out missile sites targeting British targets in the Middle East rather than just intercepting missiles and drones – stopping the archer rather than just catching the arrows, as she put it. “That’s not a U-turn, that’s policy evolving as the conflict evolves,” one ally said, a distinction where Starmer seems unlikely to buy into the nuance. In geopolitical rather than Westminster terms, what is perhaps more interesting was Tuesday’s decision by Badenoch to publicly call out Trump’s repeated and often personal attacks on Starmer, calling them “childish”. The comments came in a pooled BBC clip, with one Tory insider saying Badenoch had simply decided that the ongoing barrage of insults was “unseemly” and “getting ridiculous”, and that it was time she made this plain. While they insist her change of stance towards Trump was, as with Iran, shaped purely by events and without an eye on polling, it is nonetheless politically useful to Badenoch to distance herself from a president she has previously cited as a model for her own leadership. One of the few constants of recent UK political opinion has been Trump’s unpopularity. Just 13% of Britons currently declare themselves fans of the president, with the only outliers on this being Reform UK supporters. More generally, Trump’s repeated stream of insults towards Starmer, and the fact they are mainly connected to his frustration with events in Iran, has made it easier for UK politicians to be a bit more blunt than usual about the president. Sent out on the government’s morning interview round on Monday, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, gave an unusually clear answer when asked about Trump’s barely veiled threats to undermine Nato if allies did not send ships to help unplug the strait of Hormuz. “It’s a very transactional presidency, and our job is to navigate this,” McFadden said, uttering out loud what is, in private, the very obvious view not just in London but dozens of other capitals weary of Trump’s capriciousness. Diplomatically, Trump’s second term has at times resembled an increasingly drunk and abusive great uncle at the Christmas table, with every other guest trying to save the occasion by pretending things are normal. But as soon as someone points out the obvious, others feel compelled to join in. No one, even Badenoch, wants to be the odd one out.

UK prepares to sue Abramovich over £2.4bn proceeds of Chelsea FC sale

UK officials are preparing for a possible court case against Roman Abramovich after he missed a deadline to release £2.4bn he raised from selling Chelsea FC. The Russian billionaire failed to hand over the money by the deadline of 17 March, amid a dispute over how it will eventually be used. Government officials said they would now take steps to prepare for a potential court case so the money can be spent for humanitarian purposes in Ukraine. They have written to Abramovich’s lawyers to warn them of this. They added that they would also increase support for an independent foundation that has been set up to spend the money when it is released. A government spokesperson said: “We gave Roman Abramovich his last chance to do the right thing. Once again, he has failed to make the donation he committed to. “We will now take further steps to ensure that the promise he made at the time of the Chelsea sale is kept.” Spokespeople for Abramovich have been contacted for comment. Abramovich sold Chelsea in 2022 under pressure from the British government after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because he was under sanctions at the time, the government granted him a licence to sell the London club as long as the money was spent supporting the victims of the Ukraine war. Since then, the two sides have been deadlocked over whether the money should be spent exclusively in Ukraine or whether it can be used elsewhere. The funds are in a UK bank account controlled by Abramovich’s company, Fordstam. Earlier this week, the Guardian revealed Fordstam’s accounts show Jersey authorities may be investigating whether the money amounts to the proceeds of crime. Aid charities welcomed the government’s promise to push ahead with preparations for a court case, but warned the delays were already hurting Ukraine. Bond, which represents development organisations, urged the government to issue a new licence to allow the interest accrued since the 2022 sale – thought to be around £200m – to go outside Ukraine. Ministers have said they are open to future gains made by the charitable trust being spent outside Ukraine, but not the money currently sitting in Abramovich’s bank account. Alison Griffin, the head of conflict and humanitarian campaigns at Save the Children, said: “The news that the government is planning to take Roman Abramovich to court to free the Chelsea fund is a significant development. “However, we are deeply concerned that this will only further delay the release of these much-need funds to help support victims of the war in Ukraine.” • This article was amended on 18 March 2026. An earlier version said government ministers were open to allowing interest accrued since the 2022 sale of Chelsea FC to be used outside Ukraine; to clarify, ministers are open to future gains made by the trust to be spent outside Ukraine, but not the money currently sat in the account.

We can’t stand by while children are killed in war | Letters

We welcome Gordon Brown’s powerful focus on the traumatic effects of war on children in Iran (Children killed, a school turned into a graveyard: even in wartime, we can’t accept this, 12 March). In our work with child psychologists in Ukraine, Gaza and other conflict zones, we have seen how wars blight the lives not only of children who are injured but also of those who lose their homes, families and communities. Disrupted schooling, displacement to other countries, bereavement in their peer group and family, witnessing the horrors of conflict and feeling the terrors of air raids or ground attacks – all of these catastrophic experiences can lead to lifelong psychological disturbance. In this context, we would urge the international community not only to strengthen legal protections for children in war zones, but also to increase support for life-changing trauma treatments, which we have found in Ukraine can help up to 92% of traumatised children to recover their mental health. Dr Maria Callias Chair, Children and War UK • It shouldn’t be controversial to be against the targeting of children and teachers. It shouldn’t be controversial to stand against child slavery in war and conflict. And it certainly shouldn’t be controversial to use our voices to speak out against mass murder of children. Gordon Brown raises moral, political and legal standpoints in this well-written, factual article. I believe, as citizens, that it is our duty to engage in our democracy, as one of the British values, to raise this problem to MPs, councillors, metropolitan mayors and council leaders so that children are never blown up in their own classroom again. Mackenzie Smallman Manchester • I couldn’t agree more with Gordon Brown. No child should ever become collateral damage. Attacks on education buildings – and one assumes on schoolchildren – are war crimes. In September 2025, Save the Children stated that at least 20,000 children in Gaza had been killed in 23 months – on average one Palestinian child an hour. I have never heard this government call out Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government for war crimes, or indeed for genocide. Shame on them. Ann Kramer Hastings, East Sussex • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Pakistan to pause Afghan strikes for Eid, two days after deadly Kabul attack

Pakistan has announced a five-day pause in strikes against neighbouring Afghanistan, as a mass funeral was held for some of the hundreds of victims killed in Monday’s attack on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul. The Afghan Taliban government has said more than 400 people were killed and 265 others wounded in that attack, which took place as people at the centre were praying days before the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Pakistan denies it deliberately targeted the drug rehabilitation centre, saying it had “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure”. It accuses Kabul of harbouring extremist groups that have carried out cross-border attacks on its territory. Late on Wednesday, Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said on social media that the country would temporarily pause its military operations against Afghanistan from midnight on Wednesday until midnight on Monday. The pause, to mark the end of Ramadan, was at the request of “brotherly Islamic countries” Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, he said. But Tarar added that if any “cross-border attack, drone attack or any terrorist incident” occurred inside Pakistan, its military operations against Afghanistan would “immediately resume with renewed intensity”. The Afghan Taliban government also announced a temporary suspension of its military operations against Pakistan on Wednesday, a spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said. Monday’s airstrike on the 2,000-bed Omid addiction treatment hospital is the deadliest single attack in a more than three-week war between the two countries. On Wednesday, a mass funeral was held for some of the hundreds of victims, with coffins carried from ambulances by Afghan Red Crescent Society volunteers. Many relatives, who still do not know if their loved ones are alive or dead, continued to gather at the site of the destroyed Omid hospital. “We came here looking for our patient, he is missing,” Mazar, 50, who gave only one name, told Reuters. “We came to find out whether he is well, alive, or what has happened to him.” Mazar said his relative had been admitted at the centre for the second time and there was no information about him. “We checked the lists, but his name was not in the list of the living. Maybe he is injured or has been killed,” he said. Another man, who did not want to be named, said he had come in search of his relative on Tuesday but had not been allowed to enter the centre. “We did not find his body, nor was he among the wounded, and his name is not on the list of survivors,” he said. “We have come again today for more information.” Afghanistan’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who attended Wednesday’s mass funeral said those killed were innocent victims targeted by “criminals”. “We will take revenge,” he said, warning those behind Monday night’s bombing: “We are not weak and helpless. You will see the consequences of your crimes.” However, Haqqani added that Afghan authorities did not want war and were “trying to solve the problems through diplomacy”. Survivors of the attack have recalled horrific scenes in the aftermath of the bombing, describing how parts of the treatment centre were instantly reduced to rubble. Images from the scene show volunteers picking through mangled metal and piping. Clothing, mattresses and blankets could be seen in the debris. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), whose teams were on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the strikes, told Agence France-Presse that hundreds of people were killed and wounded. A spokesperson for the Afghan interior ministry, Abdul Mateen Qanie, said: “Some of the bodies were not identifiable and are currently at the forensic department. Some bodies were intact and were handed over to their families. Others were completely destroyed, collected almost like pieces of flesh.” Najibullah Farooqi, the head of Afghanistan’s legal medicine directorate, said bodies were being pulled out of the debris as late as Tuesday night and were being handed over to families. “Some bodies have been handed over after their identities were confirmed. However, a large number of bodies still remain with us,” he said. Afghanistan and Pakistan have disputed the target of the airstrike. Afghan authorities said the attack had targeted the rehabilitation centre, which had operated from the site of a former Nato military base for about a decade. Pakistan’s military has said the site was used for storing drones and military grade ordnance, and to train suicide bombers. The EU, UN agencies and international aid groups have said civilian and medical facilities should not be targeted during a conflict. In a joint statement, aid groups including the NRC called for de-escalation, saying that more than 115,000 civilians were already reportedly displaced, including many children. The conflict had also led to border closures, it said, disrupting the flow of imports and leading to a rise in the price of essential items. The conflict between the allies turned foes began last year after Islamabad accused Kabul of sheltering and backing militants carrying out attacks across Pakistan, a charge denied by the Afghan Taliban government. The conflict had ebbed amid efforts by countries including China to mediate, but flared again last month, with Pakistan directly targeting the Afghan Taliban and not just locations of Pakistani Taliban militants Islamabad said were across the border.

Iran threatens Gulf energy facilities after Israeli attack on its largest gasfield

Iran has threatened to attack energy infrastructure across the Gulf region in retaliation for Israeli strikes on its largest gasfield, the first targeted attacks on its fossil fuel production since the war began. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened counterstrikes on several energy facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar “in the coming hours” after state media reports that missiles had targeted its gas facilities at the giant South Pars field, the largest gas reserves in the world. The strikes on Iran’s South Pars gasfield, which it shares with Qatar, were widely reported in Israeli media to have been carried out by Israel with the consent of the US. The attack against the heart of Iran’s gas infrastructure marks a key escalation in US and Israeli military operations. The two countries have until now largely spared Iran’s oil and gas sector and helped to keep a lid on the global oil price surge. The oil price climbed towards $110 a barrel on Wednesday afternoon as the mounting threat to the Gulf’s oil and gas infrastructure fuelled concerns of more disruption to global supplies, amid the continuing blockade of the strait of Hormuz. Iran’s state media identified Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery and Jubail petrochemical complex, the UAE’s al-Hosn gasfield and Qatar’s Mesaieed petrochemical complex and holding company, and the Ras Laffan refinery as targets for the regime. “These centres have become direct and legitimate targets and will be targeted in the coming hours. Therefore, all citizens, residents, and employees are requested to immediately leave these areas and move to a safe distance without any delay,” the warning said. Eskandar Pasalar, the governor of Asaluyeh in southern Iran, condemned the US-Israeli escalation as “political suicide”. He told Iran’s state media that “the pendulum of war has swung” to a “full-scale economic war”. A Qatari government spokesperson, Majid al-Ansari, warned that targeting energy infrastructure “constitutes a threat to global energy security, as well as to the peoples of the region and its environment”. The international oil benchmark climbed by as much as 5% to a high of $108.60 (£81.48) a barrel, while Europe’s gas benchmark jumped by more than 7.5% to over €55.50 (£47.95) a megawatt hour. The third week of war began with Iranian attacks on the UAE’s Shah natural gasfield, one of the largest in the world. An oilfield in Iraq, Majnoon, and the UAE’s biggest port and oil storage facility, Fujairah, were also hit by Iranian drones and missiles. Daily oil exports from the region have fallen by at least 60% from prewar levels due to the impact of drone and missile strikes and Iran’s effective chokehold on exports through the strait of Hormuz. This has forced its Gulf neighbours to curtail oil and gas production as pipelines and storage facilities reach their capacity. But Iran’s hydrocarbon infrastructure has been largely spared. The US attack on Kharg Island, the home of Iran’s oil processing hub and the heart of its economy, took aim at military assets while leaving its oil export facilities untouched over the weekend. Iran has continued to ship tankers of crude through the strait of Hormuz without interruption in the weeks since the war began while threatening to set ablaze vessels carrying crude from neighbouring Gulf states. Early last week the global oil price pushed past $116 a barrel for the first time since May 2022, as traders began to count the cost of the war on supplies of oil and gas.

Tulsi Gabbard tells Senate panel US strikes on Iran are strategic success

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who in 2019 was selling “No War With Iran” T-shirts, told the Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday that US strikes on Iran had been a strategic success. “I’d like to remind those who are watching what I am briefing here today conveys the intelligence community’s assessment of the threats facing US citizens, our homeland and our interests,” Gabbard told the committee, “not my personal views or opinions”. Iran’s retaliatory strikes to the US-Israeli campaign have already killed 13 American service members and wounded approximately 200 more, cost taxpayers billions of dollars and scrambled global supply chains for oil, fertilizer and aluminum. This week, when Donald Trump asked allies to help reopen the strait of Hormuz, the call wasn’t answered. According to the annual global threat assessment report, Iran’s conventional military projection capabilities had been “largely destroyed”, Gabbard said, and Iran’s strategic position “significantly degraded”. But, the regime appears intact, and since internal protests have been violently suppressed with thousands killed, if it survives, Iran would probably “seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces”. In last year’s assessment, the intelligence community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.” The 2026 assessment also said that missile threats to the US homeland were projected to grow from roughly 3,000 to more than 16,000 by 2035, that North Korean hackers stole $2bn in cryptocurrency last year, and the Islamic State is actively rebuilding in Syria. But it was what the assessment did not say that drew the sharpest response. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice-chair of the intelligence committee, noted that for the first time since 2017, the assessment contained no mention of adversary attempts to influence American elections. “I don’t believe this omission means that the threat has disappeared,” Warner said. “It means that the intelligence community is no longer being allowed to speak honestly about it.” In response to questioning from Warner, Gabbard said that she did not “participate” in the FBI seizure of 2020 election documentation in Fulton county, but was present “at the request of the president, and to work with the FBI to observe this action that had long been awaited”. Warner had asked Gabbard what she was doing there, given that the criminal warrant “showed no foreign interference or nexus. As a matter of fact, the warrant was based on conspiracy theories that have already been examined and rejected repeatedly.” Warner was one of the earliest and most vocal critics of the Fulton county action by the FBI. Gabbard asserted that her directorate hd authority to investigate threats of foreign interference on elections, referring to a letter sent to Congress shortly after the FBI raid. She said Trump sent her to observe, but added that she had no prior knowledge of the contents of the warrant affidavit, and that she was “not aware that the president knew about an affidavit before it was served”. “Then why was he sending you to Fulton County?” Warner asked. “This occurred the day that the FBI had approved their warrant, approved by a local judge, and they began to execute this,” she replied before quickly moving on to other topics.