Although Israel has not claimed formal responsibility, it’s widely believed that it launched the operation that killed the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh. The fact that Haniyeh was targeted wasn’t a surprise; he had been on Israel’s radar for decades and was almost killed by an Israeli strike in 2003. The surprise was that Israel reportedly targeted Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after he attended the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
In the hours since, there has been much speculation about the wider consequence of Haniyeh’s slaying. Many observers foresee a war that expands beyond Gaza, which Israel has been attacking since Oct. 7 with the declared aim of destroying Hamas after it launched an audacious attack inside Israel that killed 1,200 people and led to more than 250 being taken hostage (to date, more than 39,400 people have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there).
For Iran, the killing of Haniyeh is, at the very least, a big embarrassment and demonstrated yet again the Iranian security services’ ineptness at securing high-profile people.
The Biden administration is likely planning for the worst, with some U.S. officials expressing concern that Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh could undermine ongoing cease-fire talks and cause the region’s other flashpoints — the Israel-Lebanon border region, for one — to explode.
For Iran, the killing of Haniyeh is, at the very least, a big embarrassment and demonstrated yet again the Iranian security services’ ineptness at securing high-profile people. Haniyeh was a frequent traveler to Tehran, meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei four times since November. But on this particular occasion he was a formal dignitary at Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony and an official guest of the Islamic Republic. The fact that, according to The New York Times, the Israelis were able, undetected, to kill Haniyeh by planting a bomb in a room of a guesthouse that he was known to stay at — and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had the responsibility of securing — means that the slip-ups exposed years ago when a top Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in another Israeli operation remain unresolved.
So, what next?
Khamenei warned Israel that it will pay a “heavy price” for killing Haniyeh and reportedly ordered a retaliatory attack against Israel. If that happens, it wouldn’t be the first time Iran has tried to strike Israel directly; in April, approximately 300 drones and missiles were launched toward Israel following an Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria, which killed a top Iranian military officer. Even then, the Iranians gave advance notice of the operation in an evident attempt to mitigate the blowback. That incident showed that, Iran’s penchant for revolutionary rhetoric aside, its top leaders have shown themselves to be cautious and risk-averse during crises. It’s easy to see why: Iran has nothing to gain, and indeed has much to lose, from getting into an armed confrontation with Israel that could spiral into a war. Any Iranian retaliation therefore is likely to be limited, not indiscriminate.
What about Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia militia? Like Iran, Hezbollah would rather avoid a full-fledged war with Israel if it can. To the casual observer, this will sound strange. After all, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets and missiles into northern Israel since October, killing 25 people (most of them soldiers), displaced 60,000 Israelis from the area and on July 27 killed 12 children in an unjustifiable, gruesome attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Yet the vast majority of Hezbollah’s attacks have occurred in a relatively depopulated area 5 or 6 miles south of the Israel-Lebanon border. The missile fire endangers the civilians who still live there but is far less than what Hezbollah is capable of. Hezbollah has attempted to accomplish two things simultaneously: support Hamas in Gaza but avoid any military moves that could push Israel into launching a full-blown war in Lebanon.
Understandably, U.S. officials remain worried, particularly after Israel killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander and top adviser to the group’s overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Tuesday. Hezbollah can’t be seen as complacent after receiving such a blow to its top echelons. The prospect of deeper Hezbollah strikes inside Israel and even more intense Israeli reprisals inside Lebanon aren’t inevitable but have certainly increased. If that happens, Iran would be pulled into the fray; Tehran is Hezbollah’s longtime patron and will at the least provide it additional weaponry.
As for Hamas, it is struggling to survive Israel’s massive assault on Gaza and is in no position to respond to Haniyeh’s killing, save perhaps with some rocket attacks that Israel has the means to combat. Yet it’s safe to assume that Hamas will halt the cease-fire talks with Israel, at least temporarily, which John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, has already acknowledged as a possibility. Though the United States blames Hamas for the logjam, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never been keen on a permanent cease-fire and won’t be sorry to see the talks stalled.
Will Haniyeh’s death seriously damage Hamas? Unlikely. There will be no shortage of fighters ready to join Hamas’ ranks. Israel has killed several of Hamas’ senior leaders in the past, including the movement’s founder and spiritual guide, the quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in March 2004, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi the following month and Saleh al-Arouri in a drone strike in January. In November 2012, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed Ahmed al-Jabari, the de facto commander of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz-al Din al-Qassem Brigades. And were it not for a last-minute intervention by Jordan’s King Hussein in 1997, Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ former leader, would have been on that list: Israel poisoned Mashaal in Amman, Jordan, but was forced to hand over the antidote after significant pressure from Jordan’s then-king Hussein.
Hamas has survived these assassinations because it has an institutional structure that has been built up over years (the movement was founded in 1987) and solidified its influence in Gaza during its 17-year rule over the territory. Haniyeh will soon be replaced, the war in Gaza will continue, and Hamas will endure.
Most headlines written after Haniyeh’s killing warn of a wider war in the Middle East, but all of the parties involved in this latest flareup also have reason to be careful.