What once belonged to the shadows of covert operations has now entered the realm of open political signaling. Under Donald Trump, U.S. foreign policy has increasingly relied on deliberate ambiguity, public threats, and media-driven shock tactics—transforming the notion of targeted assassination from a clandestine tool into an explicit instrument of psychological pressure. Recent statements targeting Iran’s highest leadership are not tactical slips or emotional outbursts, but calculated signals designed to destabilize authority, lower diplomatic thresholds, and recalibrate power through fear rather than force.
Tehran – IranView24
The line between diplomacy and psychological warfare has blurred more than ever. U.S. foreign policy, especially under Donald Trump, has moved away from traditional and institutional patterns, and moved toward what might be called “headline policy” or “shock diplomacy.” Meanwhile, the threat of the physical elimination of the independent states’ leaders is not a slip of the tongue, but part of a complex architecture to erode national authority, and change strategic calculations. Trump’s recent positions in 2025 and 2026 against the high-ranking officials, even the highest-ranking official of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are a prominent example of this approach, which requires a rational, non-emotional explanation based on national interests.
1. Dissecting the issue: From ambiguity to insolence
The first step in the face of a threat is to understand its nature exactly. In June 2025, Trump stressed his “intelligence oversight” and “operational capacity” with a provocative rhetoric against Iran’s highest-ranking official. However, saying the adverb “not right now,” he attempted to maintain the element of “time” and “suspension” as a means of constant pressure.
This rhetoric had taken on a new dimension in January 2026, linking to Iran’s internal issues. By speaking of the need for “new leadership,” Trump tried to shift the pressure from the security layer to the political and social layer. The truth is that these statements are more of a game of uncertainty than a firm operational plan. Trump wants to establish the option of physical elimination as a consistently existing possibility in the audience’s mind, thereby increasing the level of strategic pressure and lowering the floor for scoring in any kinds of possible diplomacy and interaction.
2. Strategic Layers in the Logic of Trumpism
In facing this issue, we need to know what targets Trump is looking to hunt via these threats. The analysis of his bahavior shows a five-layer package:
A) Personalizing authority: Trump has a strange tendency to reduce America’s structural power to his individual will. He wants to show that it is not incumbent on security institutions to making a final decision, but the final decision-making is up to him alone. This message is simultaneously sent to his domestic rivals in Washington and to his foreign rivals.
B) Managing deterrence through ambiguity: In the rhetoric of the international relations, a threat that is precise, having a specific time can be neutralized. Nevertheless, a threat that is shrouded in ambiguity (not right now, but we know where it is) makes the calculations of the other side conservative, and drastically increases the protection and psychological costs.
c) Domestic consumption and mass mobilization: Trump sees foreign policy as a tool to produce “the first news,” and make him the first headline. The threat against the leader of a major country keep him at the top of the world news.
d) Creating divisions in the sovereignty and the social body: By a combination of threatening the head and claiming to support the body, he seeks to erode the nation-state link. This is a psychological operation to marginalize the principle in the minds of the people that “the head alone does not pay the cost of resistance, but the stability of the entire country is at risk.”
e) Reassuring the regional allies: Although this threat implies an implied threat to the U.S. allies as well, it pursues a new function in restoring regional alliances, and seeks to send this signal to Washington’s partners that the U.S. remains committed to “shifting the balance” in their favor.
3. Legal gap: The Achilles heel of the state terrorism
Although the U.S. has a long history in kidnapping and eliminating other countries’ leaders physically, in terms of public diplomacy, one of the most important points one should focus on in media response is a clear conflict between these threats and the legal traditions of the U.S. itself. Executive Order 12333, which is known as the foundational document for U.S. intelligence activities for decades, explicitly prohibits any participation in or conspiracy to commit “terrorism” by the U.S. government agents.
Trump is the president of a country claiming to be law-abiding, and when he openly talks about removing the leader of another country physically, it means that he is destroying the foundations of international law, and even violating the executive orders of his own country. This is the point where the Iranian media should present America to the world public opinion with a rational approach as a rebellious and disruptive actor. When terror becomes a tool of diplomacy, no leader will be safe nowhere in the world, and this is a threat to the security of all humanity.
Certainly, the image of America as the cradle of democracy has been replaced by the image of an “interventionist and terrorist power” tangibly across the world, which will destroy the country’s influence in the long term.
