In the early days of the war with Iran, there was some ambiguity about shared roles by Israel and the United States in the assassinations of the top Iranian officials.
Now, however, cutting through some of US President Donald Trump’s exaggerations, it has become clear that they have been mainly carried out by Israel.
Non-political US military sources have been careful not to take credit for the assassinations, even if the CIA did provide some of the critical, helpful intelligence.
Rather, the US has focused on ballistic missiles, drones, some regime strongholds, and the Iranian navy.
Although this might seem to make sense after Israel killed so many top Iranian military officials in June 2025, it is the polar opposite of what Israel’s and the US’s approaches to the issue had been previously.
Bizarrely, even to date, Israel has not publicly taken credit for the assassination of Iran’s nuclear chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020 – despite the fact that it is a widely held conviction.
When first-term Trump wanted Israel to kill then-Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu balked, and instead he helped provide intelligence to Trump and the US to carry out the attack.
Israel was scared of Iranian, proxy, retaliation for assassination strikes
Israel was terrified that the regime in Iran would unleash its feared ballistic missiles on the Jewish state, in synch with attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas.
That meant that even Israel’s ancillary role in helping the US was kept covered up for two years until December 2021, when former IDF intelligence chief Tamir Hayman revealed it to the public.
It appears that this consideration was the reason that in the past, Israel avoided taking credit for killing Fahrizadeh and for many other operations against senior Iranian nuclear or terror officials attributed to the Mossad.
So what changed?
In April 2024, Israel assassinated the IRGC commander for Syria and Lebanon, Mohammed Reza Zahedi, while not taking credit publicly.
According to top Israeli security officials, Zahedi was turning Lebanon and Syria into additional dangerous fronts, just as Jerusalem was revving up to invade Rafah, and they needed him out of the way to keep those areas calmer.
Iran viewed the assassination as crossing a line – whether Israel took credit or not – and launched around 100 ballistic missiles, hundreds of drones, and cruise missiles at the state, in its first-ever direct attack.
Hezbollah launched rockets too, as did the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran-sponsored militias from Iraq and Syria.
Israel’s worst fears were at its doorstep. But something strange happened.
With help from the US, England, France, Jordan, and, according to their own statements, the Saudis, Israel shot down just about everything that was thrown at it, with almost no casualties.
The sides had another round in October 2024, and once again, Iran failed to badly damage Israel (though there was more physical damage that time).
Suddenly, Israel believed it could take Iran’s best shot and come out on top.
This thinking, along with various other issues, led to the massive Israeli strike in June 2025, taking out the IRGC chief, the military chief, and many other top Iranian military officials.
At that point, it was not really a choice between Israel and the US, and Trump was not even sure he was going to risk participating at all.
Only around 10 days into Israel having successfully achieved air supremacy, did Trump briefly venture in with the US air force.
All of that explains why Israel was no longer afraid to be the one who would kill top Iranian officials.
Why did Trump not want credit for it this time, when he was readier to roll the dice, with the American military to date having struck 7,800 targets in Iran and rising?
The answer is more opaque, but probably still connected to his hedging.
Now, three weeks into the war, with Trump seemingly still ready to go on for longer, many may have forgotten that until the US president knew that Israel had pulled off a strong surprise attack on February 28, it was unclear whether he would for sure order the US in – and even if he did, very unclear whether he would extend American participation for more than a few days.
Once Trump saw that Israel and the US achieved air supremacy in around 24 hours, that the risk to American soldiers’ lives was minimal, and that at least military dominance over the Iranian regime was essentially assured (however unlikely toppling the regime might be), he was much more ready to roll the dice.
But what if the initial attack by Israel had failed? What if Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials had survived, and it appeared possible that the Islamic regime might lash out with its full coordinated power? And not as it ultimately did, in a much weaker and less coherent fashion.
Trump could have tried to persuade the Iranians not to direct their full anger at American troops, but at whoever it was who dropped the bombs: Israel.
Still, that only explains day one.
Why did Trump not order his forces to eliminate Ali Larijani and the Basij national leader on Monday night?
There was already no real risk of super-dangerous retaliation, given how weakened Iran already was.
Some of the reasons for Israel continuing to carry out the assassinations could be that it has Iran much more penetrated on the ground than the CIA.
The CIA has spies all over the world on a level that Israel could never hope to even come close to matching. But Israel has a specialty in penetrating Iran that the CIA has not been close to for a decade or more.
Another possibility in the odd thinking that sometimes creeps into Trumpian strategy is self-preservation.
Some reports have said that one of the reasons he ordered an attack on Iran was because the Islamic Republic had marked him for assassination after the killing of Soleimani.
Is it possible that Trump could have thought that if he “only” bombed Iran 7,800 times, but left Israel to carry out the assassinations, that some surviving Iranian terror spy master might decide to give him a pass and to direct more fury at Israel?
It does not seem to make classical rational sense, but it is not impossible that this is part of his thinking.
Lastly, Trump is still hoping at some point to do business with a new, more moderate Iranian leader.
Israel has a harder time imagining such a scenario.
Maybe Trump feels that it’s bad form to be assassinating top Iranian officials himself when he may need to
work with the next guy in the chair, who may have been close friends with the guy who was just axed.
The full true story will probably need to wait until Trump is out of office, so that various aides will be ready to share such unflattering details without worrying as much about retaliation.
In the meantime, it appears that the top Iranian officials’ assassination vector is all Israel’s show.