On January 2, 2020, the United States of America carried out the controversial operation thatkilled Qassem Soleimani. The decision sparked international concerns regarding legality, morality,and the potential risk of World War III. News and academia alike largely focused on the moral,legal, and escalatory implications of the strike. The research on targeted killings follows a similartrend of evaluating the phenomenon from moral or legal standpoints, whilst mentioning theimplicitly rational premises of costs and benefits attributed to targeted killings through meanssuch as drones or special forces. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of thiscontroversial decision, by applying Graham Allison’s Rational Actor Model and considering thebounded rationality of the actor. By analysing three memoirs from different individuals involvedin the decision-making process the study reconstructs the process to discover how the finaldecision can be understood from the perspective of the Rational Actor Model.The study finds that the decision can be understood as rational, given the actor’s values andobjectives, perceptions on costs and benefits, as well as the information available to them at thetime. The following study does not aim to justify the operation or determine its morality, but toapproach it from an explicitly rational perspective, in order to serve as a tool for NATO partners tounderstand seemingly irrational military decisions made by the largest member in our alliance.