Friday briefing: How Iran might respond to Israel’s killing of a Hamas chief on its soil

Good morning. The inauguration of Iran’s new president was supposed to be a momentous event for the country. But a dramatic act of aggression plunged Masoud Pezeshkian and his government into a state of crisis a few hours after he was sworn in.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau head, was assassinated in the early hours of Wednesday while in Tehran for the inauguration. Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli operation that has escalated tensions in the region.

The strike came a few hours after the IDF took responsibility for the killing of a top Hezbollah military commander in Beirut. Israel said the attack was in response to the strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights over the weekend, which killed 12 children from the Druze minority community.

These hits have further degraded the already fractious relationship between Israel and Iran, which has already vowed to seek vengeance for Haniyeh’s death. In response to the attack, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said “we consider his revenge as our duty” and Pezeshkian added that Iran would make sure “terrorist occupiers regret their cowardly action”.

For today’s newsletter I spoke with the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, and Jerusalem correspondent, Bethan McKernan, about the potential fallout. That’s right after the headlines.

Five big stories

1. UK news | Police forces have been urged to step up patrols outside mosques and asylum seeker accommodation amid plans for at least 19 far-right rallies across England in coming days. Violent demonstrations spread from Southport to London, Hartlepool, Manchester and Aldershot after the stabbing murders at a children’s holiday club on Monday.

2. US news | Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have met Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and other freed American prisoners after Washington and Moscow completed their largest prisoner exchange since the cold war. In total there were 16 American, Russian dissident and German prisoners freed by Russia, in exchange for eight Russians freed by the US, Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland.

3. Venezuela | The US government has recognised Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election, discrediting the results announced by government-controlled electoral authorities who declared Nicolás Maduro the victor.

4. Economy | The Bank of England has cut interest rates for the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic, moving to ease the pressure on households after ratcheting up borrowing costs to combat the worst inflation shock in four decades.

5. Royal Mail | The Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s takeover bid for Royal Mail has been called in by the UK government for closer scrutiny of any national security risks including potential links to Russia, the Guardian understands.

In depth: ‘This is a very high-stakes bluffing game – it really is uncharted territory’

Ayatollah Khamenei has called for retaliation after the assassination on Iranian soil of Haniyeh, a close ally who was being hosted by the Iranian government. The killing of Haniyeh was a striking moment of humiliation for Tehran, Patrick says, “and also happened at the time of the presidential inauguration, when many other foreign dignitaries were present, which makes Iran look very vulnerable”.

The counterattack will probably not happen immediately – Iran waited two weeks to respond to the killing of eight Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps al-Quds force commanders – and Iranian officials have made it clear that they will strike back at their own time. It also seems likely that Iran will use a proxy, such as Hezbollah, to conduct the reprisal.

It is not clear what Iran’s response will entail but, at this moment, it does not look like it is going to attempt a large-scale missile assault like it did earlier this year. “I think they’re going to try and attempt some kind of assassination, but it’s difficult to pull off, so we’ll have to see,” Patrick says.

Iran and the west

Pezeshkian ran for office on a reformist ticket and with the desire to build a more productive diplomatic relationship with Europe and North America. “I don’t want to exaggerate the degree to which the new president wanted to have a new relationship with the west, but a big part of his presidential campaign was to say that Iran is not going to achieve the kind of economic growth that it wants with all of the west’s sanctions in place,” Patrick says.

The president was effectively attempting to jumpstart negotiations about reviving the nuclear deal with the US and getting sanctions lifted. It was a contentious position that has become untenable – with critics of Pezeshkian’s stance now emboldened to double down on their perspective that there is no route to economic cooperation with the west because ultimately, in their view, it will always defend Israel. “It’s an early blow in the first few days of his presidency for this to happen,” Patrick adds.

Netanyahu’s position

After his spending much of this year in a state of deep political unpopularity and international isolation, the last few weeks have been particularly good for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “He got to go to the US and bask in standing ovations from Republican politicians,” Bethan says. “He is a showman, so he loved that.” And the successful targeted killings of a number of high-ranking Hamas commanders has left its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar (pictured below), more isolated than ever, and as potentially the only senior commander left in the area. “The attacks have also acted as a signal to other political leaders in Hamas who are outside Gaza that Israel can reach you anywhere,” she adds.

Hamas’ operations

Israel has vowed to incapacitate Hamas by killing all of its leaders. And while there have been a number of high-profile assassinations since 7 October that may have dealt an operational blow to Hamas, these have largely been temporary setbacks because it is used to replacing leaders and reorganising.

“They will have contingency plans in place for this kind of thing,” Bethan says. “There will be somebody who is primed to take over if Israel gets Sinwar and I think, if anything, it might just make Hamas more determined because so much has already been lost.”

Ceasefire negotiations

Talks to end the war in Gaza and release Israeli hostages have hit many roadblocks over the last few months. Haniyeh was a lead negotiator in these talks, so his assassination risks further sabotaging the peace process. “Even allies of Israel are beginning to find it difficult to make the argument that Israel is serious about diplomacy and negotiating a ceasefire deal in good faith when they just took out the main negotiator,” Bethan says.

The IDF has said that Israel’s actions are not going to stand in the way of the peace process – in fact, it argues, they will hasten peace talks. It claims that by eliminating Hamas as an organisation, Bethan says, “it will force them to come to the table and make concessions in a way that they maybe wouldn’t have perhaps done before. This is probably not going to happen”.

Regional war

The killings have intensified fears that the war in Gaza is going to spread into a regional war, but Bethan says it can be argued that a regional conflict has already started. “In the last 10 days, Israel directly hit the Houthis in Yemen, there has been assassinations in Beirut and Tehran and now the world is bracing for retaliation from Hezbollah.”

The tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have also been getting worse, and with the unprecedented developments over the last two weeks, there is no way to tell what will happen next. “This is a very high-stakes bluffing game that they are playing now – it really is uncharted territory,” Bethan says.

What else we’ve been reading

• In an outstanding Today In Focus episode, teacher, priest and author Mina Smallman spoke to Helen Pidd about why she forgave the man who killed her daughters, Bibaa and Nicole, but won’t do the same for the police officers who were jailed for taking and sharing pictures of their dead bodies. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters

• “My daily dips were a gamechanger for my mental health” – Jo Bateman writes on why she’s suing a private water company over our sewage-filled seas. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team

• The Gaza voices series has been tough but essential reading. In this penultimate instalment, Nesrine Malik speaks to archaeologist Fadel al-Utol about the tragedy of losing his home and his sadness at witnessing the destruction of historic sites including museums, churches and mosques. Hannah

• It may epitomise the exploitative, deliberately addictive nature of many modern video games, but Keza MacDonald reports on why, 12 years on from its release, more than 200 million players still can’t put Candy Crush down. Charlie

• Luckily you won’t have to read several other Guardian articles and watch a whole tie-in series to get the point of Ryan Gilbey’s latest piece, on why movie Easter eggs and allusions are getting A Bit Much. Hannah

Sport

Paris 2024 | Andy Murray ended his tennis career and US superstar gymnast Simone Biles made history with her sixth Olympic gold medal and second of the Paris Games in the women’s all-around final. There were three more medals for Team GB on Thursday: silver in the women’s four final against the Netherlands, and bronzes in the women’s double sculls and men’s four.

Football | Chelsea have accepted a bid from Atlético Madrid for Conor Gallagher. The England midfielder is in the final year of his contract and the Blues are keen to sell rather than risk losing him for nothing next summer. Aston Villa have signed the midfielder Missy Bo Kearns from their fellow WSL club Liverpool for an undisclosed fee.

Tennis | Emma Raducanu continued her push for the main draw of the US Open after powering past the American Peyton Stearns 7-6, 6-2 in straight sets to secure a place in the Washington Open quarter-finals.

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