A decapitation strike, in theory, bypasses conventional battles to take out the leadership of a regime. It’s the sort of thing that the United States explores in theory, but is careful about in practice.

And that’s reason #412 why we never win wars anymore.

On paper, decapitation strikes, depending on how they’re implemented may violate international law. And so rather than take out Saddam, we spend years and countless lives to usher in democracy. You’re not supposed to target officers. Too bad the other side doesn’t play by those rules or care about them.

Israel however went after element of Iran’s shadow government, including its terrorist apparatus. Operation Rising Lion is in theory somewhat similar to Beepergate, but applied to a state. Infiltrate and then eliminate its key figures.

Three of the regime’s most serious military commanders are gone. To do that, Israel had to have actionable and immediate intelligence as to their location on a realtime basis. That has to scare Iran’s regime worse than the beepers.