Political assassinations are on the rise. It's a symptom of growing global instability.

• The FBI said Iran had planned to assassinate Donald Trump.

• It comes amid a spike in political assassinations and plots.

• It's a sign of increasing global political instability.

When Donald Trump addressed the RNC convention to rapturous applause this week, he wore a bandage on his ear and raised his fist in triumph.

Just days earlier, he had narrowly evaded an assassin's bullet while speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania.

It's not the only assassination plot believed to have targeted the former president in recent weeks. On Tuesday, CNN reported that security officials had uncovered an Iranian plan to kill the GOP's 2024 candidate.

These are far from isolated incidents, either nationally or globally.

A wave of violence against political leaders

Around the world, politics has been rocked by a wave of assassinations of political leaders, dissidents, and other high-profile figures.

In the UK, political assassinations were once rare, but two members of parliament were assassinated in five years. Member of Parliament Jo Cox was killed in 2016 amid the Brexit referendum, and Sir David Amess in 2021 by an Islamic extremist.

In May, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico narrowly survived being shot by a would-be assassin, and Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny died in prison in February in what many observers believe was a killing ordered by Russia's President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin denied the accusations.

Last year, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic were assassinated.

Dissidents have also been targeted. The assassination of Saudi Arabian dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018 was, according to the CIA, likely committed on the direct orders of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia said the allegations were "'negative, false, and unacceptable."

Political violence is on the rise

Though data on the frequency of political assassinations is hard to come by, studies do indicate a spike in the number of ideologically motivated killings being committed globally.

According to the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, the number of political assassinations rose steadily from fewer than 100 in 1999 to 900 in 2015 and around 600 in 2020 (the last year where data is available.)

Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Business Insider that rising political violence is the outcome of increasing global instability.

And the violence, he said, is the "ineluctable outcome of the factors producing the rising global instability — namely, the growing political polarization leading to extremism that we see in a variety of western democracies and the collapse in confidence of the liberal democratic state leading to the growing embrace extremist or authoritarian solutions."

"Finally, there is the rise in mistrust and lack of confidence in elected leaders — all of which has created the rising global instability," said Hoffman.

It's worth noting that the motivation of the would-be Trump assassin in Pennsylvania remains unknown. According to the New York Times, the shooter had searched for images of Trump, President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray on his cellphones and other electronic devices.

But other assassination plots have had very clear political motivations.

In 2020, a plot targeting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was formed by far-right militia members, while Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in 2022 by a hammer-wielding assailant who'd promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.

The plots aren't confined to the far-right, with a gunman who'd espoused left-wing views opening fire and injuring conservative lawmakers at a baseball event in Washington, DC, in 2017.

Tommy Mair, the man responsible for murdering UK MP Jo Cox, had also promoted far-right views, while the Fico assassination attempt is believed to have been committed for political reasons.

State-backed assassinations spread chaos

Another factor behind the spike in assassinations is the increasing instability of the global political order.

Assassinations ordered or committed by nation-states are on the rise amid intensifying competition, an erosion of the norms that governed international politics, and a perceived waning of US power.

States such as India and Saudi Arabia are aggressively asserting themselves.

Incidents such as the Khashoggi killing may once have sparked severe repercussions, but the US needs strong Saudi ties to maintain its power in the Middle East.

It's not just US allies, but enemies that are exploiting the confusion.

The Trump assassination wasn't the only one being allegedly planned by Iran on US soil, with Trump administration figures such as John Bolton and leading dissidents also targeted.

Hoffman pointed to another pattern behind recent state-sponsored plots in the US: They're often planned in US election years to evade repercussions.

"Foreign countries believe opportunistically they can perhaps escape retribution by striking in an election year," he said.

New technology makes assassinations easier

New technology is making assassinations easier, with one Russian plot against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy involving exploding drones that don't require the assassin to get close to the target. It's an echo of the plot to kill Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro with drones in 2018.

According to experts, terrorists are increasingly using 3D printed guns. A home-assembled firearm was used to kill Abe to evade Japanese gun control laws.

The motives of political assassins, say experts, are varied. Some believe they can tip the balance in elections, others are acting on the orders of authoritarian governments to intimidate dissidents, while some are acts of war to eliminate crucial figures in an enemy government or military.

But a core motivation for some, argue Hoffman and analyst Jacob Ware in a 2022 article, is to accelerate global chaos and violence.

"For extremists seeking to sow chaos and speed up some cataclysmic societal collapse, high-profile politicians provide an attractive target" as they embody the order the assassins want to destroy, they said.

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