On Saturday, the United States, in a joint operation with Israel, killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For the first time in the postwar era, Washington has succeeded in killing a foreign leader'shattering a precedent that had been sustained for decades by a mix of moral, political, and logistical concerns. Fifty years ago, in February 1976, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which directed that 'no employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.' There should be no tears in the democratic world for Khamenei, who for four decades oversaw a repressive state with terroristic tentacles that extended throughout the world. But it is worth looking at why presidents of both political parties have long been wary of the state-sponsored killing of foreign leaders. As a U.S. representative, Ford was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy....
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