Israel’s decision to hunt down Iran’s most senior security officials in the middle of an already dangerous war is not just about settling scores in Tehran. It is a live experiment in how far Washington is willing to let its closest Middle East ally push the region toward a wider conflict without enforcing the “red lines” U.S. officials have insisted still exist.
Israel is stress-testing Washington’s Iran red lines in real time
According to reporting from cbsnews.com and wire services, Israel claims to have killed Ali Larijani, the powerful secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in a targeted strike just weeks after joint U.S.-Israeli operations helped kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That means the same partnership that demolished much of Iran’s missile arsenal is now picking off the men trying to keep a wounded regime on its feet.
Larijani’s reported death matters because he was more than another senior official. Profiles in outlets like the Economic Times and Reuters describe him as the de facto wartime manager of Iran’s security state, a veteran power broker from a family sometimes called the “Kennedys of Iran.” Eliminating him is the kind of strike that, in theory, should trigger every U.S. instinct to slow escalation rather than cheer it on.
Yet there is no public sign that Washington is imposing meaningful constraints. As cbsnews.com notes, the Larijani strike came even as European allies balked at President Donald Trump’s demands for naval support around the Strait of Hormuz, warning that the U.S.-Israel campaign had already crossed lines many in Europe consider reckless. That disconnect between U.S. rhetoric about restraint and the reality of how far its partner is going is the core test of deterrence now unfolding.
Targeted killings show how much of Iran’s deterrent has already collapsed
One reason Israel feels emboldened to go after figures like Larijani is that Iran’s deterrence posture has visibly crumbled. Deterrence specialists such as Ankit Panda have pointed out that Iran’s much-touted missile arsenal failed to impose meaningful costs during the 2025 conflict, when hundreds of projectiles did little lasting damage to Israel or U.S. bases. Analyses in strategic journals and legal commentary have since described the 2026 war as the moment Iran’s threats were exposed as more bark than bite.
After Khamenei’s killing, joint U.S.-Israeli operations moved quickly to destroy missile launchers, command centers and naval assets. Reporting from AP, Reuters and others says that Iranian stockpiles have been badly degraded, with Tehran forced to husband remaining missiles and drones and leaning even harder on overworked proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. A campaign that once promised to saturate Israeli air defenses has instead become, in one analyst’s phrase, an expensive “live-fire training exercise” for U.S. and Israeli interceptors.
Within that context, Israel’s shift from infrastructure to individuals looks less like a leap into the unknown and more like the next phase of a long-running shadow war. Investigations into past operations have documented how Israeli and allied intelligence agencies built vast data pipelines, from hacked traffic cameras in Tehran to AI-assisted pattern analysis, to track senior Iranian figures. The reported strike on Larijani fits that pattern: an exquisitely timed attack on a man whose movements had already been mapped in microscopic detail.
But success on the battlefield is not the same as long-term deterrence. Every time a high-profile Iranian official is killed, the regime feels pressure to prove it can still retaliate. The question is not whether Tehran will hit back somewhere, but whether those responses will eventually land in places and on people Washington cannot shrug off.
Europe’s refusal to follow Trump signals a deterrence gap of its own
While Israel demonstrates how far it is willing to go to cripple Iran’s war machine, U.S. deterrence is being measured on a different axis: the ability to keep allies on board. The original cbsnews.com report on the Larijani strike underscored that European governments are openly rejecting Trump’s appeals to send ships and planes into the Gulf alongside U.S. forces. Officials in capitals like Berlin and Paris are warning that the campaign risks spiraling into a region-wide conflagration that will leave Europe paying the economic price for Washington’s decisions.
CNN and Bloomberg have captured how this plays domestically in the United States as well. Lawmakers critical of the war argue that Congress has not authorized another open-ended confrontation in the Middle East, and that the administration has yet to articulate a clear endgame. U.N. officials, quoted by NPR and other outlets, have gone further, lamenting that diplomacy was “squandered” in favor of a high-velocity bombing campaign and warning that one miscalculation could ignite a chain reaction no one can fully control.
This is where deterrence becomes less about missiles and more about politics. Israel’s leaders are betting that Trump, and whichever U.S. administration follows, will not want to be the one seen “abandoning” Israel in the middle of an existential showdown. European leaders, by contrast, are signaling that they no longer accept that logic on autopilot. Their refusal to line up behind U.S. policy shrinks the coalition that once gave American red lines moral and diplomatic weight.
Shipping lanes and oil prices turn abstract doctrine into everyday risk
The most visible pressure point for that fractured deterrence is the Strait of Hormuz. Security analysts at firms like Janes and coverage in business outlets such as Reuters and CNBC detail how the conflict has driven up oil prices, disrupted shipping and rattled energy markets far beyond the Middle East. With roughly a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally moving through the strait, even temporary threats to traffic there trigger rerouting, insurance spikes and political panic.
As cbsnews.com and others have reported, Iran has threatened ships transiting the area and fired on several commercial vessels, while major carriers have diverted tankers around the Cape of Good Hope. That adds days to voyages and pushes up costs for import-dependent countries that had no voice in the decision to escalate this war. The more Iran can show it still has leverage over chokepoints like Hormuz, the more pressure it can put on world capitals to demand a ceasefire, even if its military position is eroding.
Here again, deterrence is being tested from two directions at once: Can the U.S. and Israel credibly warn Iran that further harassment of shipping will trigger consequences it cannot absorb, while also convincing Europe and Asia that Washington is not the one recklessly endangering their economies? Each new strike on a figure like Larijani makes that balance a little harder to maintain.
What This Actually Means
Strip away the jargon about “red lines” and what is unfolding between Israel, Iran and the United States is a struggle over who sets the terms of Middle East security. By turning Iran’s most senior officials into targets and daring Tehran to respond, Israel is trying to prove that it can permanently reset the region’s balance of fear in its favor.
Yet the more Israel succeeds militarily, the more complicated the political map becomes for Washington. Allies who once took U.S. warnings about escalation seriously now see an administration that appears willing to gamble with shipping lanes, global energy prices and diplomatic norms. If deterrence is supposed to stop wars from widening, the current campaign risks teaching the opposite lesson: that once a conflict reaches a certain level of intensity, the guardrails fall away.
For ordinary people in the region, the test of U.S. deterrence is not whether Larijani lives or dies, but whether there is any credible path back from permanent crisis. Each wave of strikes deepens the sense that the baseline has shifted, that what once would have been considered an unthinkable escalation is now treated as a manageable cost of doing business. That is a dangerous place for any superpower to be.
What is Israel’s shadow war with Iran?
The phrase “shadow war” describes a campaign that blurs the line between peace and open conflict. For more than a decade, Israel and Iran have traded blows through cyber attacks, maritime sabotage, proxy militias and clandestine assassinations rather than conventional invasions. Investigations in outlets like Le Monde and the New York Times have mapped a long series of attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists, mysterious explosions at missile facilities and sabotage against tankers linked to both countries.
What distinguishes the current phase is how much of that once-covert struggle is now conducted in daylight. Israeli officials hint openly at responsibility for operations that were previously denied, while U.S. commanders talk about integrated air defenses and joint strike packages as if Iran were just another theater of operations. The shadow war has not disappeared; it has simply been layered on top of a declared conflict that puts civilians and global infrastructure directly in the line of fire.
Who was Ali Larijani and why did he matter?
Ali Larijani was not a household name in most of the world, but within Iran he sat at the heart of the system. As secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, he coordinated military planning, nuclear policy and crisis response. Reuters and regional outlets describe him as a veteran insider who had previously served as parliament speaker and nuclear negotiator, with deep ties to Iran’s clerical and security elites.
After Khamenei’s death, Larijani reportedly emerged as a key broker between the formal institutions of the state and the Revolutionary Guard commanders running the war. His speeches and televised appearances signaled continuity at a moment when many Iranians were unsure who was really in charge. Removing him from that role does more than decapitate a command structure. It sends a message that no amount of status or proximity to power is enough to guarantee safety when Israel sets its sights on you.
How does this reshape U.S. deterrence in the region?
Classic deterrence theory assumes that clear threats, backed by credible force, keep adversaries from crossing certain lines. In practice, U.S. red lines in the Middle East have often been fuzzy and selectively enforced. Washington has threatened severe consequences for attacks on U.S. troops, for efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz, and for steps toward nuclear weapons, yet reactions have varied wildly from administration to administration.
The Larijani strike and similar operations expose that inconsistency. When the United States helps an ally conduct unprecedented strikes against another state’s leadership, then urges that same ally not to trigger all-out war, it is effectively telling the world that its red lines are situational. That may work in the short term, but over time it encourages both partners and adversaries to test the boundaries, assuming that Washington will improvise its way through each crisis rather than enforce a stable set of rules.
Sources
cbsnews.com; The Economic Times; Reuters; AP News; Janes; CNN; NPR; Foreign Policy