Neither the United States nor Israel ever fully embraced the international norm against assassination. According to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, Israel has launched more than 2,300 “targeted killing” operations since its founding—though these were largely directed against non-State actors. Before Khamenei, Israel had never successfully assassinated a sitting head of state. The United States, by contrast, engaged in numerous peacetime plots against foreign leaders during the Cold War. Yet, by 1975 there was a brief moment of introspection in Washington, when lawmakers publicly reconsidered the U.S. role in political assassinations and embraced a domestic ban.
The shift was driven in large part by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities—better known as the Church Committee—which investigated U.S. assassination plots during the early Cold War. During this time, members of the public and some in Congress were shocked and morally disturbed by the sordid details of U.S. government plots against foreign leaders including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba.
The committee’s interim report on assassination made a series of interconnected arguments. First, it claimed that “short of war, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality.” Second, it argued that when confronting totalitarian enemies, the U.S. government should refrain from adopting the “standards of totalitarians.” American standards, the report continued, “must be higher, and this difference is what the struggle is all about. Of course, we must defend our democracy. But in defending it, we must resist undermining the very virtues we are defending.” Third, the committee distinguished between assassination plots directly instigated by the United States, which should be clearly prohibited, and U.S. support for local actors in their efforts at regime change, which required a more careful case-by-case approach. This stance was far from a green light for such plots.
To prevent future abuses, the committee recommended legislation that would prohibit and criminalize assassination as a foreign policy option. The law would have protected both foreign State officials and foreign leaders of organized non-State groups from assassination. However, there were concerns raised by members of Congress against an absolute assassination ban. Importantly, the committee reached a compromise and stated that the ban would be suspended if the U.S. government was involved in a declared war or in “hostilities or situations pursuant to the provisions of the War Powers Resolution.” During peacetime, the committee was divided and acknowledged that it “may be faced with a dilemma that cannot be resolved: tyrannicide. The appalling atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin raise a question which may be unanswerable but which needs to be carefully examined.”