No shit, and they are now normalizing assassination of world leaders…

I'm not surprised the US didnt know that 87-year-old sick supreme leader was not the full center of power...but israel not knowing either and nevertheless killing him for lulz...there is nobody at the wheel.

Counterproductive seems like underselling it a tad.

This is a replay of eliminating the Ba'athist in Iraq. Turns out when you remove the only thing keeping a factionalized sectarian country together it destabilizes the country. We learned this lesson already. Now we're repeating it because we have an administration that refuses to learn anything from history..

Also, it causes natural selection.

If an opponent undergoes natural selection, the product is the most careful and wily persons being in charge. If you kill every dumbass, only those smart enough to survive will survive. Chances are, they will also strike back.

And meanwhile, there's nobody to negotiate with.

They want them to kill each other over internal conflicts to save Israel time and effort on their ethnic cleansing goal.

Well, that just depends on what your goals are. Generating more people who want to fight you, to fuel the military-industrial complex? It's very productive for that.

We've been messing around the middle east for centuries.

No shit

it gets replaced by a more crazier leader than the next. the current one always tries to keep the balance. its how the system lord goes in sg1, they realized it turned out worst the more they kill.