In the bloody chess game mastered by Donald Trump, assassinations do not appear as a mere military option, but as a prized catch he enjoys displaying to the world as proof of his dominance. Today, moment by moment, attention is turning toward Tehran, where the White House is placing Iran’s leadership pyramid, from the Supreme Leader Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei to the president, within the sights of a lethal first strike strategy. Trump is drawn to the cinematic heroism of Delta Force and views the elimination of senior figures as an ideal means of breaking opponents’ will and paralysing the machinery of the state, wagering that the absence of these pivotal figures would turn the system into a paper structure that collapses at the first wave of street anger.
Yet the true balance of this high risk confrontation lies in Tehran’s ability to absorb the first strike without falling into the trap of chaos. If state institutions succeed in moving past the shock of potential assassinations and manage to protect their symbols or activate an alternative framework that preserves internal cohesion, they will have achieved a strategic feat that upends Washington’s calculations. Enduring the storm of the severed head transforms the operation from a swift American victory into a major political dilemma, where military power appears to have exhausted its cards without delivering the intended outcome.
In the final analysis, it is understood that whoever successfully passes zero hour alone holds the right to write the terms of the next phase. If Trump’s gamble to break the system through prized targets fails, and Iran’s leadership weathers the initial wave of strikes with resolve intact, the White House will find no escape from shifting the language of threat to the language of political realism. Washington would then be compelled, not triumphant, to ground its aircraft and sit at the negotiating table with an adversary that has proven its will does not die with the loss of individuals. Survival from assassination would thus become the strongest pressure card to impose terms in any future negotiations.
In this context, the Iranian response, as it appears, would not be a statement of condemnation nor random missiles. According to the military doctrine Tehran has built over twenty years and the lessons drawn from the latest war, it would unfold at a level that breaks the balance across the entire region. The first movement would target the network of US bases from Iraq to the Gulf. These bases are not merely military points, but power switches for the global economy. Disrupting them even for hours would mean paralysing air traffic, striking energy supplies, and plunging the Middle East into immediate paralysis. At the same time, Israel would be at the centre of the storm, not as a single front but as an exposed space facing precision missiles and suicide drones striking airports, ports, and command centres. Iran would not think in terms of strike for strike, but in terms of creating strategic chaos that forces every party involved in an assassination to pay the price across multiple arenas at the same time. This type of response is not aimed at media victory, but at making any decision to carry out a major assassination or targeting so costly that it exceeds all expectations.
