Assassination has long been used as a method to eliminate political rivals or opponents. The term assassination is mostly used to refer to a type of murder in which a person in a position of power, fame, or with political beliefs is killed, or when someone is killed for insulting a political or religious ideology. In French, the word “assassination” means terror and fear, and the rule of assassination is a fundamental principle of revolutionary governments. It was established after the fall of the Girondins (from May 31, 1793 to 1794) in France and involved numerous political executions. However, in Persian, it is commonly used to refer to political murder by means of a weapon. Nowadays, assassination has taken on other forms and personal assassination has also entered the world of political literature, in which the personal character of a rival or political opponent is destroyed through negative propaganda and irrelevant issues to the main competition.

Throughout history, with numerous examples, we have been faced with various forms of assassination, from the most primitive types to prominent examples in recent centuries, which over time, its proponents have tried to explain and justify it through philosophical, social, or religious reasoning. Ancient Roman orator Cicero compared the killing of individuals who were seen as human-faced monsters to cutting off diseased parts of the body, and saw it as a way to prevent corruption from spreading in the collective body of humans, that is, society.

The idea of overthrowing centuries of tyranny was then combined with the theory of popular legitimacy. Supporters of assassination argued that the legitimacy of government stems from…

Contract.

It is closed with the people and when the terms of the contract are violated, the ground is also prepared for removing the rulers.

The proponents of various religions have sometimes been placed among the promoters of terrorism in society. In this perspective, by labeling the individual as a corrupter of the earth or an apostate, a religious ruling of execution is issued and it is carried out in the form of assassination. Although this interpretation of religion is also faced with serious critics in religious discourse, many religious speakers confront it by relying on the practical conduct of religious saints or by adhering to the principle of avoiding the ugliness of religion.

Many perpetrators of assassinations consider the killings they have carried out as revolutionary executions and try to portray the victim as a legitimate and deserving criminal in order to justify their actions. This perspective was prevalent in the early second half of the twentieth century. However, with the development and spread of human rights and the principles of innocence and non-absolutism in judgment and condemnation of the death penalty, this perspective has lost its validity in regards to the issue of assassination.

Some individuals justify their actions of assassination under the banner of self-defense. In this perspective, they consider themselves as preemptively killing those who intend to harm them.

In recent years, with the expansion of a new concept called terrorism and public mobilization on a global level to combat this heinous phenomenon, many consider assassinations to be a part of terrorism. However, these two are completely distinct. While acts of tyranny and other forms of assassination are usually carried out within a framework of terror, there are significant differences between terrorism and political murder. As a result, many perpetrators of terrorism try to justify their actions under the label of assassination, while governments involved in the fight against terrorism label their opponents as terrorists. Although both of these phenomena may be condemned, there is a difference in the discourse of politics and human rights. In political murder, a specific individual is targeted for specific reasons and efforts are made to avoid harming others. However, in terrorism, the targets are usually unclear and carried out in a general manner. Although terrorists claim to eliminate rivals, kill innocent individuals, and punish criminals, they are attempting to solve this problem.

Nowadays, on one hand, there are efforts to conceal political assassinations (assassinations) within a framework.

Terrorism.

It has been done, and on the other hand, many terrorist groups also use political assassination tactics.

In the midst of this, thinkers like Rapoport present a new perspective for distinguishing political assassination from terrorist acts, in which instead of focusing on the motive, attention is paid to the action. He sees terrorism as a process and political assassination as an event; “Political assassination destroys a human who has corrupted a system, but terrorism destroys a military system that has previously corrupted anyone who has been placed in it. Political assassination is an incident, a passing act, and an event, but terrorism is a process, a way of life, and a sacrifice.”

Iran has been facing the phenomenon of assassination from its distant past. Recent examples of assassinations targeting government figures include the assassination of Nasser al-Din Shah, the unsuccessful assassination of Mohammad Reza Shah, the assassination of Mansour, and the assassination of various figures of the Islamic Republic. However, a new phenomenon has emerged in recent years, which can be called governmental assassinations. In this type of assassination, the government tries to eliminate its political opponents by hiring assassins, targeting them in different parts of the world. The incident of Mykonos, the assassination of Christian priests in Iran, the assassination of figures like Dr. Sami in the 1960s, and many other examples are instances of this type of assassinations in Iran, where the government is involved. This phenomenon is known as one of the most condemnable types of assassinations in the world, and many governments are involved in it. Perhaps the assassinations of Iranian figures related to the nuclear issue of the Islamic

In general, the absence of a space for dialogue in society, the lack of belief in the sincerity of the other party, which is the primary principle for creating a space for dialogue and achieving rational understanding in society, the lack of respect for the maturity and understanding of society in choosing the right path and selecting any of the tendencies and beliefs, as well as the lack of self-confidence of each advocate of existing tendencies in society in the field of power of discussion and presenting an accurate and powerful reading of themselves and believing in their own weakness, will lead to the growth of assassination for physical elimination or character assassination in order to undermine the credibility of the opponents’ thoughts in society. This action puts peace at risk and spreads the principle of victory through fear, creating a vicious cycle in which the rotation of responsibility is not based on the growth of thought and values, but rather on the ability to create fear or eliminate rivals from the scene on the seat of power by each of the actors in the social arena.

In this issue of the Peace Line magazine, we will take a special look at the phenomenon of terrorism.