The United States will likely carry out more targeted assassinations and potentially abductions in the greater Middle East in the coming year, but while some targets, like extremists and militia leaders, carry less risk, others, like Iranian leaders, open the door to potentially significant retaliation or even another round of regional war. The U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro on Jan. 3 aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump's long-standing preference for using targeted high-risk commando raids and assassinations to achieve policy goals. In the Middle East, the United States has a long history of targeted assassinations, particularly of extremists, but Trump has long suggested that leaders from Iran to Yemen to the Gaza Strip may also suffer Maduro's fate. However, while the United States possesses the technical and military capabilities to conduct such operations across the vast geography of the Middle East, each operation would carry its own risks and constraints regarding both success and impact. And although the United States is almost certain to continue its longstanding campaign of assassinating extremists from groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State, Washington will have to take into account the limits of its own power as it considers more expensive targets, potentially including the Supreme Leader of Iran.

• Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States began an aggressive assassination campaign against al Qaeda leaders, starting with strikes in Afghanistan in 2001, expanding to Yemen by 2002 and Pakistan by 2004. Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan in May 2011, while Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in Syria in 2019. 
• During his first term in 2020, Trump ordered an operation in Iraq that assassinated Iranian Quds Force General, Qassem Soleimani, as well Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. But some missions have been less successful. Trump also ordered the U.S. Navy SEALs into an aggressive, covert operation in Yemen early in his first term in 2017, a mission that resulted in the death of a SEAL. Elsewhere, SEALs were also deployed in North Korea for covert surveillance in 2019, where they killed several civilians in a failed bid to plant a covert listening device, ahead of Trump's visit there. 

Maduro's capture will have little impact on the United States' aggressive anti-extremist campaign throughout the Middle East, but it could encourage the Trump administration to consider capturing extremists more often. The Islamic State and al Qaeda remain major targets for U.S. strikes throughout the Middle East. Concern about these groups' exploiting both popular sentiment stoked by the Gaza conflict and power vacuums in places like Syria, Iraq and Yemen will continue to propel U.S. operations to assassinate their leadership and their fighters. At the same time, the tactical success of the Maduro capture may encourage Washington to occasionally consider abductions rather than assassinations, particularly if the White House believes that such operations might be more politically successful in furthering the narrative that the United States is using its power to find and try criminals and militant leaders globally. 

• The United States captured Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, widely considered the mastermind of 9/11, in 2003. But his case quickly got bogged down by allegations of torture, which has since deterred U.S. interest in capturing more militant leaders. However, capturing high-profile militant leaders, such as those on the FBI's most wanted list, could be politically advantageous for the Trump administration, as these arrests could generate favorable narratives about the White House's counterterrorism strategy — especially if the subsequent legal proceedings garner significant public attention.

A less risky target will be Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, where the United States is eager to encourage disarmament and undermine Iran's influence, though this would still carry a risk of localized retaliation. The United States, including under Trump, has an established history of assassinating top Iran-backed leaders in Iraq as part of wider efforts to weaken Iran's influence in the country. As the United States pushes these Iraqi militias to disarm, these Iraqi militias are also facing growing domestic pressure to distance themselves from Iran following the June 2025 Israel-Iran war (which exposed Iran's inability to protect proxies) and the November 2025 Iraqi election (which has forced Iran-backed parties to negotiate for influence as part of the government formation process). As a result, Iran-backed militias in Iraq would face significant constraints in conducting a major retaliation should the United States assassinate or abduct any of their leaders. While they could still attack U.S. troops in Iraq and regionally, this is unlikely to deter a more emboldened Washington from pursuing further assassinations or abductions. Instead, the United States may assess that such targeted strikes could finally convince some militias to disarm and join the country's normal political process, particularly if the White House believes these operations might have political saliency at home.

• On Jan. 4, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination — an Iran-influenced militia network that includes major U.S. rivals like Kataib Hezbollah — declared its weapons "sacred" and refused to lay them down without foreign troop withdrawal. This marked a setback for the part of the group that had previously signaled it might support state control of their weapons. 

Hamas leaders might also face U.S. attack and/or abduction as the White House tries to break the Gaza ceasefire impasse and force the group to disarm, but such operations would further inflame anti-American sentiment across the region and divide Trump's Republican Party. Trump has made no secret that he supports Israel's overarching policy goal to disarm Hamas in the Gaza Strip and potentially force it into exile. But with the Gaza ceasefire currently strained by Hamas' reticence to abandon its arms, Trump has signaled that he might be losing patience with the militant group. The United States has largely stayed hands-off in the Gaza Strip, in part for domestic political purposes, as direct military intervention is largely unpopular, and in part because Israel has long been capable of conducting its own assassination or abduction missions there. Nevertheless, a U.S. intervention directly into the Gaza Strip, whether via airstrikes or commando raids, might signal to Hamas that its strategy of trying to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States will not succeed, ultimately breaking the group's will and making it more amenable to going into exile and disarming. If the United States concludes that direct military intervention might break Hamas' military-political will, an operation becomes significantly more likely. Meanwhile, as Israel continues to face backlash for its abortive assassination attempt of Hamas leadership in Qatar in September 2025, Washington may instead step into the role of abducting or arresting Hamas leaders in third-party countries — particularly if it orders Qatar to expel Hamas, forcing the group's leaders into countries that are less able to protect them from the United States and/or Israel. However, such actions would almost certainly escalate the risk to U.S. interests, citizens, and businesses, making them greater targets for extremists outraged by America's involvement in the Gaza conflict. Furthermore, these moves would further divide the Republican Party's base in the United States, which is in the midst of a significant debate about whether the United States should continue its close relationship with Israel. 

• The Republican Party's base is divided over the future of U.S.-Israel ties, with more isolationist and/or antisemitic elements favoring reducing ties, while Christian nationalists favor continuing the close relationship to reshape the region. 

The United States may resume operations in Yemen, including assassinations and abductions, especially if the Houthis resume attacks on Israel and/or Gulf Arab allies, but Washington would struggle to effectively strike Houthi leadership. With an inconclusive U.S. campaign against Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis in 2025, and with the Houthis having paused attacks on Israel and the Gulf Arab states, there is currently no strong impetus for a U.S. escalation against the group. Nevertheless, as the Trump administration is emboldened in the wake of the Maduro operation in Venezuela, it may consider covert or overt strikes against the Houthi movement, which remains a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Such operations would become more likely if the Houthis resume attacks on Israel (either due to the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire and/or a new Iran-Israel war), or if the Houthis begin attacking Gulf Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, as part of a fresh offensive toward southern Yemen. The United States might then join the conflict, emboldened to consider assassinations and abductions, in a bid to break the Houthis' will to fight and potentially reshape the civil war's dynamics in favor of the Saudi coalition backing Yemen's internationally recognized government. But the United States would struggle to find Houthi targets from the air, and lacks the intelligence capacity on the ground that it has in places like Iraq and Syria. Ground raids, meanwhile, would run the risk of deaths like the 2019 SEAL mission, which would likely turn U.S. public sentiment against intervention in Yemen. 

• The U.S. air campaign against the Houthis in spring 2025 failed to stop their attacks on Red Sea shipping, which continued intermittently until the Gaza ceasefire was signed between Israel and Hamas in September 2025. This was in part due to the Houthis' decentralized military infrastructure and guerrilla warfare tactics, which enable the group to withstand prolonged aerial assaults, even from conventionally superior powers like the United States. 

Should Hezbollah continue to resist disarmament, the United States may also intervene against the group in Lebanon, but this would run the risk of the militants activating global agents to strike U.S. interests in the country. If the United States concludes that Israeli military pressure and American diplomatic pressure are failing to disarm Hezbollah, Washington would increasingly consider a direct intervention to see if it could break the group's will by killing or abducting its leaders. The United States may also act in conjunction with the Israelis in a potential escalation against Hezbollah, possibly in the context of another Israel-Iran war. Nevertheless, operations against Hezbollah would carry significantly more risks than the other aforementioned targets. Hezbollah maintains an overseas network of operatives and agents who might be able to strike soft targets linked to the United States, such as civilian institutions, tourists, Jewish institutions and other targets reminiscent of the Buenos Aires synagogue bombing in 1994. In addition, a direct U.S. intervention into Lebanon would destabilize Lebanon's frail political and sectarian balance, causing a groundswell of anti-Western sentiment to overwhelm the more pro-Western parties and the current, more pro-Western President Joseph Aoun. Such intervention might end up strengthening Hezbollah and destabilizing Lebanon's political and security environment, potentially even reigniting its civil war on terms unfavorable to pro-Western elements in the country. As a result, Washington would be unlikely to pull the trigger on operations against Hezbollah unless it assesses that the mission can be carried out without destabilizing Lebanon as a whole. Otherwise, the United States will likely continue to back Israel's open-ended air campaign against Hezbollah and may even allow Israel to resume high-profile assassinations against Hezbollah's leadership.

• Elements of the U.S. Republican Party's base have long sought revenge for Hezbollah's role in the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut.

Finally, the United States may assassinate or abduct Iranian leaders as part of an intervention to boost current anti-government protests or in the context of another regional war, but such operations would also face major constraints, raise the risks of significant Iranian retaliation and ensure any new leaders remain anti-American. Despite Trump's precedent in ordering the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, operations against Iranian leadership in the future would be more complicated. This is in part because Iranian leaders, in the aftermath of the fall of Syrian leader Bashar al Assad in December 2025 and the June 2025 war with Israel and the United States, no longer travel to Syria and are more cognizant of risks in Iraq, meaning the United States would probably have to conduct the mission inside Iran itself. There, the United States would face the constraints of geography, demography, better defenses and the possibility of Iranian retaliation with its still-potent missile arsenal against both the United States and its regional allies. Although the United States will likely be tempted to believe that commando operations against Iranian leadership would be successful, given the operation against Maduro, Washington will also be cognizant of Iran's still-formidable capability to carry out retaliations in the aftermath of such an abduction or attack, as in the wake of Soleimani's assasination in 2020 when Iran struck a U.S. base in Iraq with a large ballistic missile barrage. Meanwhile, operations inside of Iran, particularly raids on the ground, will carry with them the risk of repeating the political and military disaster of the 1979 hostage rescue operation that eventually helped lead to the political defeat of U.S. President Jimmy Carter the following year. Thus, the United States is more likely to back a return to high-profile Israeli assassinations against the Iranian leadership, allowing Israel to absorb the risk and blowback for such attacks, as it did during last year's war. Even with the current mass protests against the Iranian government, overarching U.S. concern about being dragged into another open-ended Middle Eastern ground war and nation-building exercise will likely be a considerable political constraint on a campaign of assassination and abduction against Iran's leaders. However, Iranian operatives who travel outside of the country, particularly to places like Iraq or Lebanon, may nevertheless be subject to opportunistic U.S. operations, especially as Trump seeks to maximize pressure on the Iranians to force them to abandon their nuclear program and missile rearmament. Meanwhile, it remains possible that Trump authorizes a single mission against a key Iranian leader as he seeks to further diminish and rattle the government, though even a single mission creates a significant risk of regional escalation once more. And even with a successful mission, replacements for killed leaders would likely be anti-American, while the population would be more likely to rally around the Islamic Republic, as they did in June 2025, in the face of foreign aggression. 

• Since the current anti-government protests broke out in Iran in late December 2025, Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if Iranian forces killed peaceful protesters, saying Iran would "pay hell" and would be hit "very hard."
• Trump has a demonstrated appetite for taking short-term risks against Iran, like when he chose to assassinate Soleimani after being presented with the option as the most risky of choices to retaliate for the death of a U.S. contractor by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq in 2019. But he has reiterated his disinterest in nation-building or long-term campaigns, and has cited the failed 1980 U.S. rescue mission in Iran as a low point in American history, as he recognizes the political risks of certain types of interventions. 
• Though Iran's missile arsenal endured significant strikes and utilization during the June 2025 war, it is estimated that up to 2,000 heavy ballistic missiles remain operational, in addition to tens of thousands of shorter rockets and missiles that can strike U.S. targets in the Gulf Arab states.