Regional war in the middle east /The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh

The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh:

A series of violent events over the past week have taken the Middle East closer to the brink of all-out war. The latest of these was the killing, on 31 July, of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political wing and a high-level guest of the Iranian government, in the Iranian capital Tehran on the day of the new Iranian president’s inauguration. The attack on Haniyeh leaves the region awaiting the retaliation that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has promised and reportedly greenlighted. While Israel has not officially claimed the hit, it has given every indirect indication that it was the author. Separately, a day before the Haniyeh operation, Israel struck and killed a top Hizbollah commander, along with several civilians and a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in a Beirut suburb where many of the Iran-backed organisation’s supporters live.

Clues to how Iran will respond may be found in the unprecedented barrage it unleashed on 13 April, when it sent more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s killing of senior Iranian officers at Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Combined Israeli-U.S. and other defences succeeded in intercepting all but a handful of the projectiles before they reached their targets; the ones that got through reportedly injured one person and caused minor damage to Israeli air bases. But this fact does not prove that Iran is incapable of dealing Israel a serious blow. Indeed, there is ample reason to believe that Tehran wanted to send a signal without doing anything close to the maximum possible damage in April. It warned the U.S. and Israel’s Arab neighbours it would fire the projectiles, in effect assisting the defensive response – though by no means making it a risk-free operation. This time around, Iran may feel that trying to achieve deterrence will require a more painful attack. This could mean giving less warning and using more precise munitions. It is also likely to act in concert with its non-state allies in the “axis of resistance”, its network of partners including Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi militants in Yemen and paramilitary groups in Iraq, as well as Hamas.

Similarly, Israel’s reaction to the April fusillade may offer insight into how it will react to an August attack. The Israeli response in April was very limited, but also highly accurate: in targeting a missile defence battery associated with Iran’s nuclear program, Israel sent its own signal about having the capability and willingness to do much worse. This strongly suggests that any move Tehran makes up the escalation ladder will be met in kind. But whether or not Iran understands this, it is in a bind. As Khamenei has already made clear, leaving the killing unanswered would, in the eyes of Iran’s political leaders, appear weak and risk emboldening its enemies. 

Iranians take part in a funeral procession for late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, ahead of his burial in Qatar, 1 August 2024. AFP