How the murder of Ismail Haniyeh will reverberate in the Middle East and the world
Since Wednesday morning, the world media has been feverish with the news of the murder of the political leader of Hamas in Tehran. Analysts are speculating about which way the pendulum of the Middle East conflict will swing and whether the daring operation of the Israelis (and there is little doubt that this is the work of Israel) will lead to a major regional war.
According to the state news agency Fars, Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and stayed at a veterans' residence in the north of the Iranian capital.
At around 2 a.m. local time, a “airborne guided missile” was fired at the location where Ismail Haniyeh was, Iranian state-run IRNA reported. His bodyguard was also reportedly killed.
The Iranian side has launched an investigation to determine the details of the operation and the position from which the missile that killed the Palestinian leader was fired.
Hamas condemned the killing, which it called a “Zionist blow” and a “serious escalation” in its decades-long conflict with Israel. Senior Hamas leaders threatened that their movement was “ready to pay any price” and that “the moment of truth has arrived.”
Hamas's militant wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, issued a long-winded statement that «the criminal assassination of leader Haniyeh in the center of the Iranian capital is a significant and dangerous event that takes the struggle into a new direction and will have serious consequences for the entire region. The enemy miscalculated by expanding the scale of aggression, eliminating resistance leaders in various arenas and violating the sovereignty of the states in the region. The criminal Netanyahu, blinded by megalomania, is leading the occupation entity to the abyss, accelerating its collapse and final expulsion from Palestinian land.»
But this is all expected rhetoric. And here we come to the most important thing: what will actually happen next?
Let's start right off the bat: the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in itself is unlikely to lead to a new big war in the Middle East. “New” is the key word here, because the war in this not just hot, but white-hot region has been going on for a long time. Since October 7 alone, about 40 thousand dead people on both sides became its victims.
There is, of course, a possibility that Iran will not leave without consequences the daring action of the Israelis, who not only killed the leader of one of Tehran’s allies, which is Hamas in occupied Palestine, but also staged an attack on Iranian soil. Moreover, at the moment the new head of the executive branch took office, when many foreign guests arrived in the Iranian capital (which, of course, led to increased security measures). Such spitting is worth avenging.
However, it should be remembered that Ismail Haniyeh is not the first person killed by the Israelis in Iran. Israeli intelligence services have a number of murders of scientists involved in nuclear research. The most high-profile story is the murder of the «father of the nuclear program» Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020. The head of the research center at the Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Republic was shot with a machine gun equipped with a remote-controlled robotic device. No one in Iran doubted the involvement of Israeli «knights of the cloak and dagger» in the massacre.
It is also worth remembering that Israel's main ally, the United States, also committed a political assassination of one of the most senior figures in the Iranian government: General Qasem Soleimani was killed by an American missile in Iraq in 2020. And again, the sky did not fall to the ground; it ended with shelling of American facilities on Iraqi territory (well, and if you believe the American intelligence services, the Iranians allegedly planned to eliminate Trump, who gave the order to eliminate the general).
But let's get back to the death of Ismail Haniyeh. What can Iran do? Launch a massive attack on Israel with a swarm of drones and missiles (like what happened in April after the Israelis killed two generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Damascus)? What's the point? Especially considering that most of the Iranian shells were neutralized by Israeli air defenses. However, the Iranian government cannot leave the brazen murder without consequences either.
The same applies to Iran's regional allies — yes, Hamas, Hezbollah, and even the Yemeni Houthis may try to retaliate for the murder by launching large-scale strikes on Israel — but they are already launching them!
Moreover, Haniyeh did not play such a critical role for Hamas. After the former Palestinian prime minister left the Gaza Strip, he lived in exile for the last seven years. Yes, he was the face of Hamas diplomacy, actively participating in behind-the-scenes negotiations on a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal. And he even stated that despite the death of several of his children and grandchildren from Israeli strikes, he was ready to talk about suspending military action. But Ismail Haniyeh hardly influenced the combat operations of Hamas militants. Moreover, there were even doubts that he knew in advance about the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
“This murder will not achieve the goals of the occupation and will not push Hamas to capitulate,” high-ranking figures of the Palestinian group said about Haniyeh’s death. Indeed, the removal of the political leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement changes little about what is happening in the Middle East.
And for Israel itself, as they say, there is little benefit, by and large. Of course, the principle of «an eye for an eye, an eye for an eye» has been implemented — whatever it is, but moral compensation for the failure of the special services, which slept through the attack on October 7, has been received. But this is a propaganda effect for domestic consumption. There is also a powerful signal sent to external enemies: we will get it not only from under the ground, but even in the Iranian capital! And other enemies of the Jewish state will now, of course, have to walk and look around — be it in Tehran, Doha, Cairo or elsewhere.
However, ordinary Israelis will also now have to walk around looking around in foreign cities, even far from the Middle East. There is a considerable danger that they may be chosen as «soft targets» by some terrorists who want to take revenge not only for the suffering of the residents of Gaza, but also for the death of the leader of Hamas. And that means Israel will take revenge too. And so on, in a circle. And this is, really, scary – because the spiral of hatred in the Middle East has heated up to such terrible temperatures that it is simply impossible for a person to withstand.
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