In a recent post on this blog, Sophie Duroy and Luca Trenta have offered an important and timely analysis of the normalisation of assassination as a tool of Statecraft, arguing that the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on 28 February 2026 represents “a new stage in the erosion of the international norm against assassination”. The concerns they voice are well-founded. The deliberate targeting and killing of a sitting head of State is a worrying precedent.

In this post, I want to focus on one seemingly minor claim that runs through the Duroy and Trenta analysis: the assertion that Khamenei was killed “outside an armed conflict”.

Splitting hairs again?

It is important to understand what turns on the question and, equally, what does not. The applicability of the law of armed conflict to the killing of Khamenei has no bearing on the rules governing resort to force. These two bodies of law operate independently. There is no tenable justification for the US-Israeli attack on Iran under the rules governing the use of force, as others have explained (see here, here and here). Even if Khamenei was a military objective and directing an attack against him was not a violation of the law of armed conflict (see here for analysis), this in no way justifies the use of force against Iran under the rules on the use of force: his killing would still form part of an act of aggression and therefore be unlawful under those rules.

Then why does the applicability of the law of armed conflict matter here? The law of armed conflict channels violence. It confers various protections on certain persons and objects, such as civilians, the wounded and sick and objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, whilst also tolerating or even permitting the use of violence against military objectives. Once an international armed conflict exists, these rules apply to all belligerents, regardless of whether they are aggressors or victims of aggression. In the present case, the United States, Israel and any other country using force unlawfully must therefore observe the limits that the law of armed conflict imposes on the conduct of hostilities. This agnosticism of the law of armed conflict with regard to the origins of the conflict is one of its greatest assets: it is not necessary to agree about which State is committing acts of aggression and which State is acting in self-defence, as all parties to the conflict must comply with the law of armed conflict, whatever the answer to those use of force questions is. The limits imposed by the law of armed conflict should therefore operate as an uncontroversial, commonly accepted baseline of behaviour among all belligerents, even when there is very little else that they may agree on.

Whether or not the law of armed conflict applied to Khamenei’s killing is therefore not some technicality that risks diverting our attention from the “real” issues. On the contrary, it has great practical and normative significance.

Is there an armed conflict?

It is helpful to start by asking whether an armed conflict exists between the US and Israel on the one side and Iran on the other side at this point in time. The answer is clearly yes.

An international armed conflict exists whenever there is resort to armed force between two or more States, as the ICTY Appeals Chamber held in Prosecutor v. Tadić (para. 70). Under the prevailing view, no minimum duration or level of intensity of fighting is required. However, even those who argue for a minimum gravity threshold should have little difficulty classifying the present situation as an international armed conflict. The 28 February strikes alone involved over 1,500 air and missile attacks against targets across Iran, conducted jointly by US and Israeli forces, while Iran responded with ballistic missile strikes against US military bases across the region and against Israel. Service personnel and civilians were killed and the material damage is extensive. There is nothing remotely de minimis about this resort to force. Consequently, an international armed conflict exists, without any shadow of doubt.

Duroy and Trenta offer no explanation for their assumption that Khamenei’s killing took place outside an armed conflict. Without wanting to put words into their mouths, two arguments come to mind that might support their position.

Belligerent nexus

Not every act of violence that takes place during an armed conflict is necessarily an act of hostilities. Pub fights and armed robberies still happen during war. In principle, such incidents are not governed by the law of armed conflict. The first possibility, therefore, is that the strike against Khamenei had no nexus to the ongoing hostilities. However, this argument can be discounted quickly. In an official statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that “Ali Khamenei was targeted in a precise, large-scale operation carried out by the Israeli Air Force, guided by accurate IDF intelligence, while he was in his central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran, where he was together with additional senior officials”. This account of the operation, as well as other official statements, clearly indicate that Khamenei was not killed in some private feud unrelated to the conflict, but was targeted as an integral part of the armed hostilities with Iran.

“Second shot” theory?

This leaves the second possibility. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the strike on Khamenei as a “trigger event”. If the strike on Khamenei was the opening act of the conflict, this brings into play the debate as to whether or not the law of armed conflict applies to the very first act of violence in an armed conflict. There are two competing views on the matter.

The dominant position holds that the law of armed conflict applies as soon as one State employs armed force against another and that it governs the first hostile act itself. This position derives support from the law itself. While the bulk of the law of armed conflict is engaged only during actual hostilities, certain rules are expressly applicable at all times, including in times of peace. The existence of an armed conflict is therefore not an absolute precondition for law of armed conflict obligations to be engaged. Those who plan or decide upon attacks have certain precautionary obligations, for example the duty to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection, but are military objectives. This is an obligation that precedes the actual execution of an attack and thus its effects. Put differently, targets must be verified before bombs are dropped on them. There is nothing in the law of armed conflict that suggests that this duty is somehow inapplicable to the opening act of an armed conflict.

The competing view argues that the law of armed conflict cannot apply to the first act of violence, since it is that very act which triggers the applicability of the law in the first place. The law of armed conflict therefore can only apply to the “second shot” fired in the conflict. This argument is motivated largely by reasons of policy. If the law of armed conflict would apply to the first shot, then a State carrying out a targeted killing of a member of another State’s armed forces would never violate the right to life, since under the law of armed conflict such a targeted killing would be permissible and hence not arbitrary from a human rights law perspective. Consequently, States could rely on the law of armed conflict to assassinate individual combatants belonging to unfriendly powers. The killing of Qasem Soleimani illustrates the point.

In the present case, the “second shot” view is not compelling. First, it is a minority position which does not, as noted, reflect the obligations imposed by the law of armed conflict, in particular the duty to take precautions in attack.

Second, the “second shot” argument is meant to prevent States from invoking the law of armed conflict to justify an isolated targeted killing. As Agnès Callamard noted in relation to the Soleimani killing, “one may interrogate whether [law of armed conflict] standards are the best ‘fit,’ for lack of a better word, to assess the act and the situation” in such isolated incidents. That is a fair question. However, the factual circumstances in the present case are entirely different. We are not faced with a single targeted strike, but with large-scale hostilities of which the killing of Khamenei formed just one part.

Third, the assumption that the law of armed conflict should not be triggered too easily as this might overlay or displace the more protective regime of human rights law does not always hold water. An appeal to human rights law remains largely theoretical if the belligerent States involved do not accept that their human rights obligations are engaged in an extra-territorial setting and if no avenues for effective remedy exist. Moreover, while the right to life may offer solutions when it comes to the targeting of persons, it is not clear what human rights rules would govern the destruction of public property, whether military or civilian, belonging to a hostile power.

Fourth, conducting an air campaign against a capable adversary in a contested airspace poses obvious operational risks. It would be rather surprising to find that the conflict began with the Israeli Air Force casually flying over Tehran to drop a bomb on Khamenei’s compound. Reporting suggests that this is not how the events unfolded. While the precise sequence of events is difficult to reconstruct based on information available in the public domain, it appears that hostilities began with cyber and electronic warfare measures designed to disrupt and degrade Iran’s communications and other capabilities, followed by kinetic strikes by the US and Israel. These strikes included Tomahawk missiles fired by the US against Iranian command and control facilities, missile and drone launch sites, air defence capabilities and military airfields. It appears that these missiles were fired before Israeli aircraft launched their missiles on Khamenei’s compound and that targets outside Tehran were struck before the compound was hit in Tehran.

Even if the “second shot” theory would reflect the law and applying it to the present case would be appropriate for policy reasons, neither of which is the case, it would still be inapplicable based on the facts, as it is almost certain that other attacks preceded the strike on Khamenei’s compound.

Accordingly, there appears to be no basis for the assertion that Khamenei was killed “outside an armed conflict”.

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