Iran has vowed revenge after airstrikes killed the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut in the space of 12 hours, as the dual Israeli assassinations crushed hopes for an imminent Gaza ceasefire and fuelled fears of a “dangerous escalation” in the region.
Israel did not directly claim the attack on Haniyeh, but there was little doubt among the country’s enemies, and its own politicians and analysts, about who was responsible.
Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference in Tehran, quoting witnesses, that Haniyeh had been killed by a missile that hit him “directly” in a state guesthouse where he was staying.
Haniyeh was visiting for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who said after the killing that his country would defend its territorial integrity and honour.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed Israel and said Iran had a “duty” of revenge because Haniyeh had been targeted while a guest in the country. The New York Times reported that Khamenei had issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, citing three Iranian officials briefed on the order. It was not possible to verify the report.
The timing and location of the dual attacks, targeting very high-profile commanders in densely populated capital cities, made them particularly humiliating for Iran and Hezbollah, raising the risk of a slide towards full-blown regional war as Tehran seeks to re-establish a military deterrent.
Although Hamas has also vowed revenge, after nearly 10 months fighting in Gaza it has little capacity to inflict damage beyond the strip.
Security forces and officials in Israel, Iran and Lebanon mostly agree that all-out conflict would be devastating for all parties, regardless of who emerged victorious. But in the high-stakes efforts to project power in a regional proxy war, the risk of miscalculation and deadly mistakes is intensifying.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, believed the attacks marked a “dangerous escalation”, his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement that urged all parties to work towards de-escalation. “Restraint alone is insufficient at this extremely sensitive time.”
The killing of Haniyeh, who played a key role for Hamas in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, led many to question whether Israel’s government had any real desire to halt the conflict there.
Egypt and Qatar, who have played key roles in talks, warned that Haniyeh’s killing would set back negotiations.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, wrote on X, joining a regional chorus of condemnation.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made a defiant address on Wednesday evening, celebrating the strike in Lebanon – which Israel has officially claimed – and vowing to continue fighting in Gaza.
“For months, not a week has gone by without people, at home and abroad, telling me to end the war. I didn’t give in to those voices then and I won’t give in to them today,” he said.
“If we had yielded to the pressure to end the war, we would not have eliminated the leaders of Hamas, we would not have taken over the Philadelphi Corridor [along the Egyptian border], which is the oxygen for Hamas, and we would not have created the conditions to both return all our abductees and achieve the goals of the war.”
The US administration has for months been leading an international diplomatic effort to prevent the war in Gaza spreading into a broader regional conflict, and US diplomats have recently pushed hard for a ceasefire deal in the strip.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Wednesday that Washington had not been aware of or involved in Haniyeh’s assassination, and that a ceasefire deal for Gaza was still vital.
The road to de-escalating regional conflicts with Iran and its allies, from Hezbollah at Israel’s northern border to Houthis in Yemen, runs through Gaza.
All the groups have said they took up arms in solidarity with Palestinians, after Israel responded to Hamas’s cross-border attacks on 7 October by launching a war there. Without a ceasefire in Gaza, it is unlikely they will put down arms.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “We don’t believe that an escalation is inevitable … And there’s no signs that an escalation is imminent.”
At an emergency UN security council meeting, China, Russia, Algeria and others condemned Haniyeh’s assassination, which Iran’s UN ambassador called an act of terrorism. Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the UN, said failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza was responsible for worsening tensions.
The Palestinian representative, Feda Abdelhady Nasser, condemned Haniyeh’s killing saying “Violence and terror are Israel’s main and only currency”. She added, “There is no red line for Israel. No law it will not breach, no norm it will not trample. No act too depraved or too barbaric.”
Haniyeh’s funeral will be held in Iran on Thursday, and the country has declared three days of mourning. His body will then be flown to Qatar’s capital, Doha, for burial.
Despite the shock at his death, Hamas officials and analysts said it would not have much immediate impact on the ground in Gaza.
Hamas has survived past assassinations of its top leaders, including Haniyeh’s mentor Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and Haniyeh did not command operations in the territory after leaving for exile in 2019.
Hamas fighters inside Gaza are led by Yahya Sinwar, thought to be the mastermind of the 7 October attacks in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.
Haniyeh had urged Palestinians to be “steadfast” when Israel killed Yassin and again when an airstrike killed three of his sons and four grandchildren in Gaza in April.
In an interview with Al Jazeera at the time, he insisted that his personal loss would not prompt Hamas to shift its position in negotiations. His own death is likely to elicit a similar response from other Hamas leaders.
Israel officially declined to comment on Haniyeh’s assassination, but it had vowed to kill all Hamas leaders after the 7 October attacks. Its intelligence services have a history of carrying out covert killings inside Iran, mostly targeting scientists working on the country’s nuclear programme.
The retired general Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate, said on Wednesday night that the attacks were “two quality operations of Israel Defense Forces against two top terrorists, one in Beirut and one in Tehran”.
Haniyeh’s death came hours after Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukur, was killed in an airstrike on a south Beirut suburb launched in retaliation for a rocket attack that killed 12 children at the weekend.
Lebanon’s foreign minister said the strike was a shock after assurances from Israel’s allies that the country planned a limited response that “would not produce a war”.
“We did not expect to be hit in Beirut. We thought these were red lines that the Israelis would respect,” Abdallah Bou Habib told the Guardian. The strike also killed three women and two children and injured dozens.
Shukur’s funeral was also set to be held on Thursday, with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is expected to speak.
News of the assassinations was largely greeted with delight in Israel, as part-completion of a promise to hunt down the men responsible for the 7 October atrocity.
Social media was filled with triumphant memes. The cabinet minister Amichai Chikli shared footage of Haniyeh apparently nodding to chants of “death to Israel”, with the caption “careful what you wish for” in a post on X.
It was also seen as a vindication for the security forces after the failures of 7 October. “It really revives a little bit of the lost dignity of the intelligence community of Israel,” said Tamir Hayman, a retired general who, like Yadlin, served as head of defence intelligence.
However, he said the tactical impact would not change Israel’s overall position, nearly 10 months into its war in Gaza. “In terms of the overall strategic posture of Israel and the complicated situation we are facing to stop the war and achieve all our goals, it really does not change a lot.”
He called on the government to use its military advantage now to push for a ceasefire deal and the return of hostages, and then turn its attention to securing the northern border. “If we continue [relying] on those very good tactical achievements, we are basically in the same place we have been yesterday,” he said.
Meanwhile, two US airlines, United and Delta, said they were suspending flights to Tel Aviv due to the current situation, while Air France and low-cost carrier Transavia France said they were suspending flights between Paris and Beirut until the weekend.