Qassam Muaddi
Mondoweiss / July 31, 2024
Israel assassinated Hamas politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran after a series of mounting regional tensions that included unprecedented Israeli attacks on the “Axis of Resistance,” including airstrikes on Beirut and Yemen.
The head of the political bureau of Hamas and former Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli strike on his residence in the Iranian capital Tehran early on Wednesday. Haniyeh was on a visit to Iran to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Hamas announced in a statement that Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike, while the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, accused Israel of the assassination, adding that it “will be severely punished.” The Iranian Revolutionary Guard also accused Israel in a statement, vowing that “the Zionist regime will face a harsh response from the resistance axis and especially Iran.”
Israel, for its part, did not officially claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s killing, although its heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, celebrated the assassination, commenting that “this is the correct way to cleanse the world.” The Israeli public broadcaster also said that the assassination occurred by means of a missile launched from outside of Iranian territory.
Haniyeh is the highest-ranking Hamas figure to be assassinated by Israel since the beginning of the current war. He was also heading the ceasefire negotiations on Hamas’s behalf in recent months.
The assassination came hours after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya suburb, considered to be Hezbollah’s most major stronghold. The strike targeted Hezbollah senior commander Fouad Shukr, described as Hassan Nasrallah’s righthand man. The fate of Shukr remains unknown as of the time of writing, but Hezbollah admitted that Shukr was inside the building targeted by Israel. The Israeli attack on Beirut marks the second major assassination in the Lebanese capital, the first being the killing of Hamas leader Saleh Aruri in January. The attack was also likely a response to the killing of 12 Syrian Druze children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in an explosion that Israel accused Hezbollah of orchestrating, despite the Lebanese group’s categorical denial of responsibility.
Both incidents also come a week after the bombing of Yemen’s Hodeida seaport, which Israel claimed responsibility for in retaliation for a previous drone attack launched by Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement in Tel Aviv, which led to the death of an Israeli citizen.
These three actions signal a regional escalation as the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza has entered its tenth month. At the same time, the U.S. has continued to scramble to conclude a ceasefire and prisoners’ exchange deal ahead of the November presidential election. But both strikes on Beirut and Tehran followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. and his speech before Congress, where he pledged to continue the war “until absolute victory” while making no mention of a ceasefire deal.
The attacks on Beirut and Teheran, in addition to the earlier attack on Hodeida, indicate Netanyahu’s intentions to prolong the war by widening its regional scope in order to sabotage a possible ceasefire deal, especially after reports by Israeli media that Israeli security and military chiefs have been pressuring Netanyahu to show flexibility in negotiations. Although Israel and the U.S. have declared that they don’t want a regional war, Israel’s actions make the possibility of such a war closer than ever. The U.S. also announced that it would defend Israel in the event of a wider confrontation.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss
This is a developing story
