Why Larijani's killing is a blunder by US, Israel in Iran war

The US-Israel war was meant to decapitate Iran's hardline leadership, but the killing of the "pragmatic" Ali Larijani might have done the opposite. By eliminating consensus-builder Larijani, the Israelis might have removed any scope of talks and pushed Iran into deeper hardline control. This could be a ploy to keep the war going.

It was meant to break Iran's hardline leadership, believed the Israelis and Americans. Instead, their actions might have hardened the Iranian regime further, which could bite the duo back. This is exactly what several experts are saying about the killing of Iran's secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, in an Israeli airstrike. Larijani had emerged as the key architect of the country's military and diplomatic strategy since the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the military brass on February 28.

With the killing of the "pragmatic" Larijani, the Israelis have narrowed the Iranian leadership circle, which might choose to prolong the war. Larijani was seen as one of the top Iranian officials who would have been open to talks with Iran's "adversaries", the US and Israel, who huddled to decapitate the leadership in Tehran.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently described Larijani as the "flesh and blood" of the Iranian clerical regime.

One of the primary objectives of the strikes on Iran was the removal of the hardline leadership. Ironically, the US and Israel might be pushing Iran into deeper hardline hands.

Geopolitical expert Fareed Zakaria, in an interview with India Today TV, said Israel and the US targeting Iran's top leadership is likely to push the Iranian regime toward a more hardline and militarised stance.

"It does appear that Israel is targeting one-by-one the entire leadership structure of the Iranian state. People who want negotiations are not the ones who take charge after enduring such attacks," Zakaria said. "What this means is that the regime will get more and more hardline".

The other theory, according to an expert, is that Israel has taken out Larijani to keep the war going. Israel doesn't want the war to stop before degrading Iran's military power to the extent that it is unable to strike it in decades.

Larijani's killing comes just weeks after the US-Israel strikes eliminated Khamenei, in a bid to trigger a regime change. The move that was supposed to shake the very core of the Islamic Republic. But what followed was consolidation. In a week, Tehran named the next Ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, who experts say is a "more radical and apocalypse-obsessed" man who is "uniquely dangerous" and "more dangerous than 50 nuclear bombs".

Now, with Larijani gone, the pattern might be repeating itself. Each American and Israeli strike aimed at "decapitation" might instead be narrowing Iran's leadership, who would have to sit down for talks. The IRGC has already rejected de-escalation overtures conveyed by intermediaries and are now demanding that the US and Israel "accept defeat" first.

While Washington and Jerusalem might be achieving something tactically, they are also losing strategically. The war is not ending, and it's now being driven by a more hardline leadership.

WHO WAS LARIJANI AND WHY DID HE MATTER?

Ali Larijani was not just another Iranian official. Larijani, who read and interpreted German philosopher Immanuel Kant as a scholar of philosophy, was a system insider with influence across various factions.

A former Parliament Speaker, a nuclear negotiator and most recently the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Larijani was placed and operated in the corridors of power and policy in Tehran.

Israeli officials saw him as Iran's "de facto wartime leader" after Khamenei's death. That made him a high-value target. The strike that killed him in Tehran also wiped out his close aides and other high-ranking officers of the IRGC and the Basij.

A scholar of the Middle East, Gokhan Ereli, told Turkish public broadcaster TRT World that Larijani was one of Iran's "primary crisis managers and was one of the most vital links between Iran's military, clerical and diplomatic spheres".

DOES LARIJANI'S KILLING GIVE IRAN HARDLINERS THE TEETH?

Most experts say yes. The killing of Larijani does away with one of the last Iranian leaders who combined ideological loyalty and pragmatic engagement in decision-making.

Gokhan Ereli, told the TRT World that the absence of Larijani would "embolden those who favour total resistance... The hardening of the Iranian government's resolve is the most likely outcome".

Iranian analyst, Trita Parsi of the Washington DC-based think tank, Quincy Institute, said, "when relatively moderate voices have been killed by Israel, they have more often than not been replaced by a younger generation of more hawkish voices who oppose Iran's policy of strategic patience, who opposed the June ceasefire, and who currently oppose any de-escalation or ceasefire".

On being asked by a CNN news presenter about the consequences of Larijani's killing and if it would backfire, former New York Times correspondent in Tehran, Nazila Fathi said, "The loss of Larijani was not a big blow for Iran. But I believe it would be a strategic problem for the US."

"Larijani was the kind of person that had the internal ties within the Islamic Republic... to become the person the United States could negotiate with when the dust settled, and without him, there were not a lot of Iranians left within the establishment to have the kind of cross-factional ties," Fathi told the CNN.

WAS LARIJANI KILLED BY ISRAEL TO KEEP THE WAR GOING?

Middle East expert Vali Nasr, who warned that each assassination by the US and Israel is only pushing Iran's leadership further towards hardline radicalisation, said, "Larijani's replacement will be appointed by IRGC".

"The off-ramp solution depends on some credible negotiators with whom you could talk. Now that Larijani is gone, they'll have to search for somebody else," Fareed Zakaria told India Today TV.

Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute argued that the Israeli strike might have been aimed at "literally kill[ing] off Trump's off-ramps", meaning it reduced chances for peace talks.

Parsi described Larijani as a "key figure" and "chief consensus builder" who "favoured talks with the US" and could have "build[ed] consensus within the system for an Iranian off-ramp".

"The Israelis want the war to continue to degrade Iran's military capabilities further to shift the balance in the region in Israel's favour for years to come. They have fought for more than two decades to get the US to go to full war with Iran, and having finally achieved that goal, they do not want Trump to cut the war short. Without figures like Larijani in the Iranian system, Trump's pathways to ending the war just got narrower," Parsi wrote on X.

So, in trying to weaken Iran through targeted killings, Jerusalem, and collaborator Washington, might have ended up strengthening the forces they sought to contain. Each strike and an Iranian counterstrike is shrinking the space for diplomacy. It's pushing power further into the hands of hardliners who see compromise as weakness, experts say. And the war continues.

- Ends