Israel’s Iran ‘Decapitation Strategy’ Is Reshaping the Middle East

Israel Hits Iran Hard

Israel’s surprise attack on Iran in the early morning hours of June 13 saw more than 200 aircraft strike more than 100 targets in Iran. Among the targets were key Iranian commanders, including the head of the Iranian army and also the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This type of decapitation strike is how Israel dismantled Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon.

Between the summer of 2024—when Israel also killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh—and June 2025, the Middle East has seen an entire generation of Iranian-backed leaders eliminated.

This leadership turnover is important because there are no easy replacements for Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leaders such as Haniyeh, the Sinwar brothers, and Saleh al-Arouri—the latter was the deputy leader of Hamas when he was killed in January 2024. In addition, Hezbollah not only lost Nasrallah, it also lost his successor, Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on October 3, 2024.

Iranian Top Leadership

Iran has now watched its IRGC being culled by Israel. The IRGC is the real power behind the throne in Iran. It maintains its own army and militia, and it has a navy and air force. Israel not only eliminated the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, but the IDF also killed Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the IRGC Air Force.

He was killed while at a command center along with other IRGC aerial unit commanders, the IDF said on June 13. The IRGC Air Force was behind Iran’s missile and drone program. When Iran claimed to have developed a “hypersonic missile” in the summer of 2023, Hajizadeh was there at the unveiling.

Drone Warfare in the Region and Beyond

Hajizadeh’s drone and missile program impacted not only the Middle East but also aided Russia in its drone war against Ukraine. Russia has used Iranian Shahed drones against Ukraine for three years. Iran’s long-range missiles were also exported to the Houthis in Yemen for use against Saudi Arabia.

They then developed them to target Israel, and they used Iranian drone components to attack countries in the region. Similarly, Iran’s drones and missiles aided Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Israel on Target

By targeting so many key figures in Iran’s command structure and also eliminating leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has re-shaped the Middle East in the last year. The pummeling that Hezbollah took in Israeli strikes in October and November also emboldened Syrian rebel groups and helped lead to the fall of the Assad regime. That regime, which ran Syria for fifty years, can also be seen to be another key player in the region swept aside in part by Israel’s aggressive strikes over the past year.

These Israeli moves didn’t happen in a vacuum. Hamas began the war on Israel on October 7, 2023. Iran encouraged its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq to target Israel in the wake of the attack. As such, it was Iran that helped light the fuse that actually led to the Israeli strikes on June 13. Israel had spent years gathering intelligence on Iran and also its proxy, Hezbollah.

Israel invested less in dealing with the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq or groups such as the Houthis and Hamas. In fact, it was Israel’s underestimating of Hamas that enabled Hamas to carry out the October 7 attack. Having failed to predict the Hezbollah attack, Israel has doubled down on dealing with the other Iranian-backed proxies and targeting Iran itself.

It’s likely the Iranian regime will try to recover from the blows of June 13. Iranian state media IRNA says the regime has already appointed new commanders to replace the fallen. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Major General Seyyed Abdulrahim Mousavi as the new head of the Iranian Armed Forces.

In addition, Major General Mohammad Pakpour was named the near leader of the IRGC. These leaders may try to fill the shoes of those who came before, but it’s unlikely they can leave the mark that those like Salami and Hajizadeh left over the last decades.

The leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas have been dominant influences within their respective groups for more than a generation. Nasrallah, for instance, was a key leader since the 1990s. Haniyeh also shaped Hamas throughout the early 2000s. Hajizadeh and Salami were the same for the IRGC. By removing all these key leaders, Israel has reset the Middle East. This is because an entire generation of Iran’s commanders and key allies have been affected.

These leaders symbolized the rise of Iran and its proxies. They lived in a world that assumed Iran was going to change the world order by working with Russia and China and weakening the US influence on the region.

They thought that Israel could be isolated and that weakening Israel would also lead countries to see the US as weak because Israel is one of America’s key allies. However, Israel’s playbook in 2024 and 2025 has dramatically shifted things against Iran and its proxies.

Iranian influence in places like Iraq won’t disappear easily. However, it has suffered a setback across the region and is now at home.

Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a Senior Middle East Analyst for The Jerusalem Post. Seth is now a National Security Journal Contributing Editor.