Iran planned to hold a funeral Thursday for Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose killing in Tehran has added to fears of a regional conflict.
Haniyeh was in Tehran for the swearing-in of Iran’s new president, and the militant group said he will be buried Friday in Qatar where he was based.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that Haniyeh’s assassination and Israel’s killing of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut “represent a dangerous escalation” of tensions in the Middle East.
Guterres said in a statement that at a time when “all efforts” should be focused on reaching a cease-fire in the nearly 10-month Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and increasing humanitarian aid to famished Palestinians, instead “what we are seeing are efforts to undermine these goals.”
Guterres called for “maximum restraint by all” but acknowledged “that restraint alone is insufficient at this extremely sensitive time.”
“The international community must work together to urgently prevent any actions that could push the entire Middle East over the edge, with a devastating impact on civilians,” Guterres said.
Israel on Tuesday evening killed a top Hezbollah commander, Fouad Shukur, in an airstrike in Beirut. Israel said Shukur was responsible for a July 27 attack that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
The Israeli military, while announcing the attack on Tuesday that killed Shukur, made no comment about the predawn airstrike Wednesday in the Iranian capital.
In a subsequent statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish state “will exact a heavy price from any aggression against us on any front” but did not mention the assassination of Haniyeh.
Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, told VOA that it is clear Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s killing, and that it is part of an Israeli strategy to respond to its own failures in the October 7 attack, including a lack of deterrence against Hamas.
“It was very clear that if that was left unaddressed, other actors like Hezbollah could get similar ideas,” Berman said. “So, everything that Israel has done since, both in terms of the Gaza war, but also long-range strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, attacks in Syria, attacks in Lebanon, and now the elimination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, is intended as part of a long-term strategy to rebuild Israeli deterrence.”
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday the United States does not believe an escalation of Mideast tension is inevitable.
“There’s no signs that an escalation is imminent. But I also said that we watch it very, very closely,” Kirby said.
The U.S. State Department urged Americans to avoid travel to the entirety of Lebanon, not just the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon for which it had previously issued do-not-travel guidance. Britain and Australia similarly warned their citizens.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Haniyeh was killed in the early hours of Wednesday. Hamas said in a posting on Telegram that Haniyeh was killed at a residence in the Iranian capital.
Khamenei vowed to retaliate, saying Israel “prepared a harsh punishment for itself.”
“We consider his revenge as our duty,” Khamenei said in a statement on his official website, noting Haniyeh was “a dear guest in our home.”
Hamas’ armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, also vowed to retaliate and warned of “major repercussions” for the Middle East.
Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that because Haniyeh was killed on Iranian soil, there is a question about whether Iran will leave it to its proxies such as Hezbollah, the Yemen-based Houthis or militias in Iraq and Syria to respond, or whether Iran will act like it did in April in response to an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria and launch its own attacks on Israel.
“I think we should assume at a basic level that the proxies will respond,” Goldberg said. “The question is whether Iran enters the battlefield again directly.”
Norman Roule, a former U.S. intelligence manager for Iran, told VOA there is a “high likelihood” Iran will respond, but that it will need to consider a type of action that shows it can hit Israel without starting a regional conflict.
“The supreme leader has stated that Iran must respond to this,” Roule said. “The Revolutionary Guard, which would have been responsible along with other Iranian authorities for Ismail Haniyeh’s protection will have been humiliated and will need to restore their sense of face, and last of all, Iran’s proxies will look to Iran to demonstrate that it has a deterrent capacity.”
Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told VOA that in addition to a direct attack on Israel, other options for Iran would be maritime provocations and ramping up its nuclear program.
“It can also attempt terror plots throughout the region and also elsewhere abroad, targeting Israeli diplomatic facilities and installations in those countries,” Brodsky said. “There are a variety of options that the Islamic Republic will try to employ. But at the same time, the Islamic Republic does not want to get involved likely in a direct war between with Israel and the United States, because in that contest, the Islamic Republic stands to lose mightily.”
Haniyeh’s death comes nearly 10 months after Iran-backed Hamas launched a terror attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 39,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry, while Israel says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters it has killed.
Haniyeh became the head of Hamas’ political bureau in 2017 and had been living in exile in Qatar after leaving Gaza in 2019.
Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been trying for months to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but that process faced serious questions Wednesday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Wednesday with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and “emphasized the importance of continuing to work to reach a cease-fire to the conflict in Gaza that would secure the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people and unlock the possibility of broader stability,” the U.S. State Department said.
The Qatari foreign minister posted earlier Wednesday on the social media platform X: “Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
