Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Assasinated in Iran
A bold strike that threatens to escalate a regional war.
AP (“Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is killed in Iran by an alleged Israeli strike, threatening escalation“):
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a predawn airstrike in the Iranian capital Wednesday, Iran and the militant group said, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risks escalating the conflict even as the U.S. and other nations were scrambling to prevent an all-out regional war. Iran’s supreme leader vowed revenge against Israel.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has pledged to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the Palestinian militant group killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage. The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran — and only hours after Israel targeted a top commander in Iran’s ally Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The dramatic assassination of Hamas’s top political leader threatened to reverberate throughout the region’s intertwined conflicts. Most explosively, the strike in Tehran could push Iran and Israel into direct conflict if Iran retaliates.
“We consider his revenge as our duty,” Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement on his official website. He said Israel had “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” by killing “a dear guest in our home.”
Bitter regional rivals, Israel and Iran risked plunging into war earlier this year when Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April. Iran retaliated and Israel countered in an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle before it spun out of control.
Haniyeh’s killing could also prompt Hamas to pull out of negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in the 10-month-old war in Gaza, which U.S. mediators had said were making progress.
And it could enflame already heightening tensions between Israel and Hezbollah — which international diplomats were trying to contain after a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Tuesday evening, Israel carried out a rare strike in the Lebanese capital that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander allegedly behind the rocket strike. Hezbollah, which denied any role in the Golan strike, said Wednesday that it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was hit in a Beirut suburb, killing two women and two children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Reuters/Jerusalem Post (“Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran“):
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran, Hamas claimed on Wednesday morning, while claiming Israel was behind the attack.
In a statement, the Islamist terror group said they mourned the death of Haniyeh, who they claimed was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran.”
Haniyeh, along with one of his guards, was reportedly killed at his Tehran residence, according to an IRGC statement, and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya reported that he was killed at approximately 2:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.
[…]
Haniyeh is the political leader of the Hamas terror organization. He was visiting Iran for the swearing-in of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Three of Haniyeh’s sons were killed in an airstrike in April. His sister was also eliminated last month.
The Gaza-based residence of Haniyeh, which was used as terrorist infrastructure, was hit by an IDF airstrike in November. Haniyeh usually resides in Qatar, but his property was being used as a meeting place for other members of Hamas leadership.
Such brazen attack in Iran’s capital will undoubtedly lead to escalation. The prospects for the low-level regional conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere heating to a boil have increased significantly.
At the same time, I can’t help but be pleased when perpetrators of mass murder are taken out. And sending a signal to other terrorists that they are not safe anywhere is a nice bonus as well.
And sending a signal to other terrorists that they are not safe anywhere is a nice bonus as well.
Unless they are “settlers” in the West Bank. They even have protection from the military and the police.
I do remember reports that the political leaders of Hamas were not kept in the loop about the Oct 7 strike and were pretty taken aback at the scale and ‘success’ of it. I can’t, of course, speak to their accuracy. More immediately relevantly, wasn’t this the person involved in the ceasefire and hostage release negotiations…?
@Assad K:
What is the one thing extremists and fanatics on both sides of a religious or nationalistic fight can agree on? Kill those trying to reach for peace.
@MarkedMan:
Well put.
They also seem to have hit Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
And in a little addition to the Middle East participants list:
Ukraine HUR appears to have carried out a drone strike on Russian forces at Kuweiras airbase near Aleppo.
Am I the only one who sees this as a way for Netanyahu to shut down any ceasefire permanently and scuttle any talk of a two state solution or any Arab state reconciliation with Israel?
@Rick DeMent:
I don’t think a two-state solution has any real world support. It’s just the solemn, right-thinking thing to say, like Miss America wanting world peace. Name the country in the region that wants an actual Hamas/PA state. Egypt? Jordan? Lebanon? The KSA wants Israeli tech and weapons and military weight vs. Iran, and clearly DGAF about Gaza or the WB.
Also a strike in Iran isn’t going to bother Saudi in the least. In fact I think it’s extremely likely that the Saudis watched the whole thing play out on radar and giggled contentedly.
@Rick DeMent: Not important. Eliminate Hamas is the goal. Eyes on the prize. Peace is what you seek if you can’t win.
@Assad K:
Being part of the group involved in negotiators no more demonstrates Haniyeh’s benevolent intentions, than observing that the Israeli government was involved in the same negotiations establishes the bona fides of Netanyahu.
@Rick DeMent: No you aren’t but you aren’t correct.
This was a long standing high value target who is normally untouchable because he stays in Qatar. Going to Iran created the opportunity. Israel took it. It wasn’t a politically motivated decision by Bibi.
@Rick DeMent:
Peace may be possible with the PA, if Israel actually sought it.
It is extremely unlikely that anything other than a periodically breached ceased-fire can ever be achieved with Hamas.
Hamas is a terrorist group whose goal is to destroy Israel. They are only nominally the govt in Gaza since they dont allow elections. I think that makes their leaders valid targets so I am good with them killing the guy. Do I wish they had killed him while he was in Gaza and avoided the risk of escalating with Iran? Sure, but I think you take your shot when you get it as long as you are willing to accept the consequences. I dont really think the logistics favor a direct Iran Israel war though the proxies could heat up, but that seems to be an intermittent thing anyway.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds:
You could say the same thing about trying to eliminate Hamas without destroying Palestine or that a one state solution will bring security to Israel without subjugating Palestinians
@JohnSF:
I certainly didn’t mean to imply he was in any way benevolent, just that killing the person one is actively negotiating with seems counterproductive.
@MarkedMan:
Looks like there’s not going to be a negotiated peace. They’re going to fight to the death, apparently:
The talks were already failing, so seems like Israel is just moving ahead with Plan A, attempting to eliminate Hamas militarily:
More heart-wrenching scenes of bloodshed to come, following what we’ve already seen from 7 Oct and after. Doesn’t seem there’s much the world can do about it, now.
@JohnSF:
also just to clarify, I have no other particular qualms about Haniyeh getting killed (as opposed to the thousands of uninvolved Gazans) except for how it relates to the negotiations.
@Rick DeMent:
Yes, which is why my position pretty much from the start was that there was no solution, just more of the same and more can-kicking. The two-state solution is for western consumption. I don’t believe anyone in the area wants it. What we’re doing now is trying to tamp things down temporarily – again. Rinse and repeat.
Does anyone else feel we should just wall off that part of the world and move on?
@Kathy:
Long ago I floated the idea (joking, mostly) that we should nuke Jerusalem, Mecca and the Vatican. Leave the Jews, Muslims and Christians to wonder why their almighty God allowed it.
Not seeming so crazy now, does it?
@Michael Reynolds:
Some old-style Presbyterians would not wonder in the slightest.
(That’s not a joke either; or at best, a very, very, dark one.)
The parties may not want a two-state solution but is is the only solution since genocide-ethnic cleaning is out of the question and so is Israel continuing to be an apartheid state with all the attenuating violent problems. It is obvious that Israelis and Palestinians cannot share the same nation so what are the choices? As to killing the Hamas leader, if he was involved in the attack then he got his comeuppance.
@Michael Reynolds:
The problem with permanent occupation is it guarantees permanent, if intermittent conflict.
And the politics of Israel mean it will be impossible to prevent a continual pressure for settler expansion in the West Bank.
Those two will steadily undermine Israel’s political position in Europe; and the Israeli economy is closely linked to the EU: over a third of Israeli imports and exports, iirc.
Also, the policies of the sheiks various may be inclined to pragmatism re. Israel.
But even they have their limits: the Saudis have made it plain there will be no full treaty while the Gaza conflict continues.
And betting the future of Israel on the continued rule of the dynasts (and the military in Egypt) seems a risky one in the longer term.
@Michael Reynolds:
Destroy so much renaissance art and ancient sites?
@Assad K:
I would say that it means Bibi has decided the pretense of negotiations is no longer useful.
@JohnSF:
They might puzzle a bit about Mecca and Jerusalem though…. 😉
I wonder how safe it would be for Bibi to leave Israel in the next several months.
@JohnSF: The ideas of “sovereignty of God” and “free will/agency of man” collide at awkward places, n’est pas?
ETA: And I have met the occasional non-conforming Fundy/evangelical who advocated for environmental destruction as a tool to “force God’s hand, as it were.”