Israel is killing the people who could end its wars

Former British intelligence chief Sir John Sawers told the Financial Times that Israel deliberately targeted Ali Larijani in March 2026, arguing Larijani was one of the few Iranian figures who might have negotiated an acceptable settlement. Larijani had served as Iran’s nuclear negotiator two decades earlier, defended the 2015 deal as speaker of parliament, and after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the war’s opening day became Iran’s effective decision-maker. Western diplomats described him as tough but pragmatic — characteristics often associated with potential interlocutors in high-stakes diplomacy.

The assessment situates Larijani’s killing in a longer pattern in which assassinations remove rivals’ points of negotiation and hence the channels through which wars can end. The piece cites historical examples: the 1948 assassination of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte by Lehi in Jerusalem; the 1992 killing of Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi, after which Hassan Nasrallah rose to lead a more capable and hardened movement; and the 2020 killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely attributed to Israel, which came as the incoming U.S. president had signaled willingness to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.

The article argues that such removals produce a vacancy of moderation rather than merely a leadership gap. Successors are often less flexible, and the loss of negotiators can harden both sides’ expectations — reinforcing the perception that diplomacy is impossible and making negotiation a self-fulfilling prophecy. Examples from Israel’s recent conduct against non-state actors include the July 2024 assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader and chief negotiator at the time, after which authority passed to Yahya Sinwar and the ceasefire track stalled; Nasrallah was killed weeks later.

Israel’s stated justification for these strikes has been military and preventive — to decapitate hostile leadership deemed threats. The article notes that while those targeted were not unambiguous moderates (Larijani helped run Iran’s war effort and backed repression; Haniyeh led the October 2023 attack), the intent to foreclose diplomacy is inferred rather than definitively proven. It also observes that external pressure and targeting of pragmatists can widen internal splits in adversary states, strengthening security establishments that favour defiance and reducing the influence of actors open to negotiation.