Israel assassinated Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early yesterday morning. Although it has not officially claimed responsibility – as it often doesn’t for operations in Iran – Israel’s government press office published a photo of the 63 year-old with the word “Eliminated” across his forehead.
So what? The international community – led by the US – has spent the past ten months striving to prevent a full-scale war engulfing the region. That task is now much harder. The assassination of Gaza-born Haniyeh has:
- enraged Iranian leaders, with Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promising a “duty of vengeance” for this “bitter, tragic event” within Iran’s borders;
- came hours after Israel struck Beirut on Tuesday evening in an attack killing Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander; and
- will complicate already fraught negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of over 100 Hamas-held Israeli hostages.
The timing. In the short-term, the attack in Tehran was no doubt a coup for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The meticulously planned extra-judicial execution came as Haniyeh visited Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
That served a double purpose: demonstrating Israel’s reach within Iran, regarded by the Israeli leadership as enemy No 1; and killing the Hamas leader outside Qatar, where Haniyeh usually lives. Any action within Qatar, which the US trusts as a mediator in the region, was presumably seen as taboo.
The risk. Haniyeh had long been seen – in the admittedly highly relative terms of the spectrum within Hamas – as a “moderate”, particularly when compared to Yahya Sinwar, who replaced him as the faction’s Gaza leader in 2017.
- A political rather than a military figure, Haniyeh led Hamas to the ballot box in 2006 when Hamas won the last Palestinian elections, hoping in vain for a measure of international recognition.
- While Haniyeh was one of the three leaders sought by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan over Hamas’s October 7 war crimes, it’s a near certainty that Sinwar and the military wing’s leader Mohammed Deif were responsible for planning the attack in detail.
- Above all it was Haniyeh, as Hamas’s international diplomatic face, who was the lead negotiator for the Islamic faction in the faltering ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
- There have been periodic Israeli assassinations of Hamas leaders in the past – including the faction’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2004. These showed little sign of weakening Hamas’s resolve – and arguably sometimes had the opposite effect.
Sheikh Mohammed Al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister, said yesterday: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
The suspicion. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu may argue that the assassination continues the military pressure on Hamas that he has repeatedly insisted – without tangible results so far – will finally secure the freedom of the remaining hostages.
If it doesn’t, it may fuel suspicions that Netanyahu, who without mentioning Haniyeh’s assassination warned last night of “challenging days ahead”, is prolonging the war in his own interests rather than those of his country.
What’s more. That would deepen the agony of the hostages’ families. London-based Sharone Lifshitz, whose father Oded is being held in Gaza, told Haaretz newspaper yesterday: “Haniyeh could have been killed 15 years ago, and they didn’t do it. Why now that there is a deal on the table, did they choose to kill him?”
