Fears of
escalation mount after Israeli killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders
Iran vows
revenge after airstrikes kill Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on same day as commander
killed in Beirut
Emma
Graham-Harrison, Quique Kierszenbaum and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem
Wed 31 Jul
2024 20.33 BST
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.
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