In a massive escalation of Middle East tensions, Haniyeh’s death in Tehran came only hours after Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran, Hamas and Iran’s foreign ministry announced Wednesday morning, marking a significant escalation in the Middle East conflict and sparking fears over whether Iran will feel forced to retaliate.
Haniyeh’s murder in Iran came only hours after Israeli forces said they had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike on Beirut — in retaliation for an attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, which struck a football pitch, killing 12 children and youths from the Druze community.
In a statement, Hamas said its leader was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran,” and vowed revenge. Haniyeh, who was one of Hamas’ top leaders for nearly two decades, was in Iran for the inauguration of the country’s new president. Iranian state media said Haniyeh died when a rocket struck a facility for veterans in northern Tehran.
Israel has been accused of carrying out several assassinations inside Iran in league with anti-regime resistance fighters over the past years, including a series of attacks on top nuclear scientists. It has not commented on the death of Haniyeh.
If a pinpoint Israeli strike is confirmed, his murder will be a massive and embarrassing security lapse for the Iranians as Haniyeh had been a central part of the inauguration ceremony, hugging and kissing Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The immediate reaction from Tehran came from foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani, who said the “pure blood” of Haniyeh “will never be wasted” and vowed the “unbreakable bond” between Iran and the Palestinians would only be strengthened.
The longer-term question will be what Tehran does in practical terms, given it was willing to launch a massive missile barrage against Israel in April. The strike on Hezbollah — a group fully supported by Tehran — will also raise the prospect of an Iranian response.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, in which the militant group killed some 1,200 Israelis and took around 250 others hostage, Israel’s leaders have vowed revenge on Hamas officials. In the 10 months since, Israel’s airstrikes and ground operations have killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, the Gazan authorities say.
Israel has a long track record of killing Hamas’ leadership. In 2004, Israel carried out an airstrike in Gaza killing Hamas’ then-leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The same year, it assassinated one of the militant group’s founders, Ahmed Yassin, in Gaza City.
In recent months, Haniyeh led efforts to negotiate a cease-fire from exile in Qatar.
The top Hezbollah commander killed over the same night in Beirut was named as Fuad Shukr. The U.S. had been offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts — linking him to a 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 U.S. military personnel.
Washington and European capitals fear these tensions could quickly snowball into a regional conflict. Leaders and officials in France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. have been reaching out to counterparts in Lebanon, Israel and Iran to forestall a wider regional war. The stakes are particularly high for Paris and Rome, which have hundreds of troops stationed in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Even NATO heavyweight Turkey has threatened to intervene in the conflict to support the Palestinians. Turkey’s foreign ministry labeled Haniyeh‘s killing a “heinous attack.”
Moscow, which is seen as friendly to Hamas, condemned what it called the “completely unacceptable political assassination” of Haniyeh, who met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow in September 2022.
Video of Haniyeh’s last hours on earth
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2024
Via @MarioNawfal pic.twitter.com/zmoXrxoa6n
