In an offhand remark about Iran at the White House on Tuesday, President Donald Trump showed how much his approach to foreign policy differs from his predecessors’.
“We killed all their leadership,” he said. “And then they met to choose new leaders, and we killed all of them. And now we have a new group and we can easily do that. But let’s see how they turn out.”
Apart from its bluntness, the comment reflected what analysts call a “decapitation strategy” — a brutal metaphor for targeting or sidelining a powerful political figure in the belief that it can reshape the country they led.
It’s not just Iran, either. Trump has also sought to reshape Venezuela and Cuba by targeting their leaders as part of his deeply personalized approach to foreign policy.
It’s a far different approach than what’s typically favored in Washington, where teams of analysts look at countries as complex systems driven by institutions, history and culture.
Instead, in Trump’s second term, diplomacy has become less about painstaking negotiations and more about high-impact moves aimed directly at those in power. Traditional foreign policy tools — sanctions, alliances and multilateral agreements — often take years to produce results. Trump’s strategy, by contrast, seeks speed and visibility, promising immediate, headline-grabbing outcomes.
In practice, however, the outcomes have been far more complicated — and far less successful.
Read Lily Becker’s analysis here.
