Eve is here. The fact that Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davis have had to explain that assassinations are war crimes and now feel the need to claim that the United States is a serial killer in Iran after we supported genocide in Gaza speaks volumes about their assessment of how deeply exposed most of the English-speaking public is to propaganda.
Iran has made U.S. brutality the centerpiece of its messaging campaign.
Iran 🇮🇷 published this emotional video
I don’t think they will stop until all objectives are achieved pic.twitter.com/0jmyZbkkaY
—. (@LBGamestips) March 25, 2026
Written by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace and author of several books including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Iranian Republic of Iraq, and Nicholas J.S. Davis, independent journalist, CODEPINK researcher, and author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Disaster of Iraq. Together they are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.
Over the decades, the United States has gone from concealing assassination plots to openly embracing assassinations and “targeted killings” as a matter of policy. Now, in the war with Iran, that evolution is reaching its most dangerous stage.
On March 17 and 18, the United States and Israel assassinated three Iranian government officials in targeted airstrikes. Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Basij Internal Security Forces. and Iranian Minister of Information Esmail Khatib.
The missile that killed Ali Larijani also destroyed an apartment building, killing more than 100 people. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the Israeli military has been authorized to assassinate as many Iranian officials as possible and continues to do so, bringing the number of Iranian officials assassinated in the past year to at least 70.
Ali Larijani’s assassination deals a blow to the already fraught chances for peace talks between Iran, the United States and Israel. Ali Larijani is an experienced and pragmatic senior officer who has played a leading role in negotiations with the United States and other world powers since 2005.
Mr. Larijani earned degrees in mathematics and computer science, attended a respected seminary in Qom, served in the Iran-Iraq war, and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. After the war, he managed Iran’s national television, earned a doctorate in Western philosophy from the University of Tehran, and entered the world of politics and government in 2005 after writing three books on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In 2024, Larijani wrote a book on political philosophy titled “Reason and Tranquility in Government.”
If the United States wanted peace and restored relations with Iran, Ali Larijani would have been a potential negotiator. The decision to assassinate Larijani two weeks into the war suggests that U.S. leaders were not interested in negotiations.
Another possibility is even more chilling. Israeli leaders may have viewed Mr. Larijani as a possible candidate for resignation and deliberately removed him to ensure the war continued.
The killing was followed by an unprecedented attack by Israel on Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s largest and a resource shared with Qatar. Iran retaliated with missile strikes against Israel and energy infrastructure across the Gulf. In Qatar, damage to the Ras Laffan LNG terminal, one of the world’s most important gas hubs, could take years and billions of dollars to repair.
As global energy markets re-elect, U.S. officials confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that the South Paris attacks were carried out in coordination with Washington, contrary to President Trump’s denials.
The pattern is unmistakable. As one analyst noted, Israel appears to be purposefully escalating to eliminate moderates within Iran while attacking critical infrastructure and sparking a broader regional war with no room for detente.
Analysts are debating the extent to which Israel is pushing this escalation and how many U.S. officials are fully coordinating. But imperial power cannot outsource its responsibilities. As Harry Truman’s famous desk sign proclaimed, the spending stops here.
In its alliance with Israel, the United States has perpetuated the systematic assassination of foreign leaders, from Palestine and Lebanon to Syria, Yemen, and now Iran. This is nothing new. In 2020, President Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which was working with the US military to fight the Islamic State.
However, murder is clearly prohibited under U.S. law. Executive Order 12333 specifically states, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in or conspire to commit an assassination.”
The ban emerged from a church commission investigation into U.S. assassination plots against Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, and Chile’s General Rene Schneider.
It also reflects long-standing international laws, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
However, after 9/11, the United States systematically ignored or circumvented many of the constraints of U.S. and international law. As the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq sparked widespread armed resistance, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began advocating for what he called a “manhunt,” sending U.S. special operations forces to hunt down and kill alleged resistance leaders, much as Israeli infiltration forces had already done in occupied Palestine.
US Special Operations Command commander General Charles Holland refused permission for such an operation, but his resignation in October 2003 allowed President Rumsfeld to appoint more like-minded officials to senior positions and bring in Israelis to train US military death squads in Israel and North Carolina.
As the saying goes, “Dead men tell no stories,” as thousands of civilians have been systematically murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little accountability for the resulting killings. Two senior U.S. military commanders told The Washington Post that only about 50 percent of “kill-or-capture” raids by Joint Special Operations Command target the “correct” or intended people or homes, while forces participating in those raids said that assessment vastly exaggerates the success rate.
Drone warfare has accelerated this trend. Under President Obama, strikes expanded tenfold and targeted killings became a central pillar of US policy. By 2011, night raids in Afghanistan were numbering in the hundreds every month, alienating the Afghan people and ultimately ensuring the defeat of the US occupation and the return of the Taliban.
Currently, the US and Israeli military are conducting airstrikes and drone strikes to assassinate Iranian leaders and kill civilians in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. Gone are the words of restraint, replaced by open praise of “lethality” and threats of further war crimes.
What was once hidden, controversial, and suppressed is now openly, normalized, and defended.
The cumulative effect is clear. The United States uses assassinations and extrajudicial killings as routine policy tools, trampling the United Nations Charter, the Hague Convention, the Geneva Conventions, and its own laws, and undermining the very international legal order that the United States claims to protect.
On the other hand, a multipolar world is emerging, driven primarily by countries in the Global South. However, the transition to a peaceful and sustainable world is by no means certain. The greatest obstacle in its way is the United States’ continued reliance on the unlawful threat and use of military force and economic coercion to maintain its supremacy.
Iran has maintained restraint for decades in the face of false accusations over its nuclear weapons, “maximum pressure” economic sanctions and escalating threats and attacks from the United States and Israel. We quietly built our defense and military strategy for the day we needed it, and the day came.
The failure of the international community to stop the United States’ successive wars of aggression poses an existential threat to the United Nations Charter and the post-World War II order. As Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned at the CELAC summit on March 21, “The more serious humanity’s problems become, the fewer the means for collective action. And the path only leads to barbarism.”
The United States now faces tough choices. Either we continue down this path of lawless violence, or we turn the page on our country’s international criminal life and finally truly embrace diplomacy and peaceful coexistence with our neighbors, as the United Nations Charter demands.
For Americans, and for the world, that choice is becoming a matter of survival.
