Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says he will make Israel “regret” the “cowardly” killing of Ismail Haniyeh, adding that Iran would “defend its territorial integrity, honour pride and dignity”.
In a statement quoted by AFP news agency, the Iranian president described Haniyeh as a “brave leader”.
The Hamas political leader, who is based in Qatar, was visiting Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s presidential inauguration ceremony.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also says that avenging his death is “Tehran’s duty”, adding that Israel – who has not claimed responsibility – had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment”.
Haniyeh was in Mossad’s crosshairs
The killing of the overall leader of Hamas is seismic in terms of both the target and where it happened.
Weeks after the unprecedented 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said publicly that he had instructed the Mossad – Israel’s intelligence agency – “to act against the Hamas leaders wherever they are”.
Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran when he was killed, reportedly by an aerial strike.
The fact that it happened not in Qatar where Haniyeh lived surrounded by security, but inside Iran – Hamas’s most important backer – sends a signal that nowhere is off-limits if it is indeed confirmed that Israel carried out the strike, and that it is capable and willing of acting right under the nose of its most mortal foe.
Haniyeh’s death comes just two weeks after Israel targeted Hamas’s number two, its elusive military chief Mohammed Deif, in Gaza. Indications are that he was killed.
The removal of Hamas’s top political and military leaders is the biggest blow to the group on an individual and operational level since the war began.
Haniyeh was key figure in ceasefire talks
While details of the attack slowly emerge, its political consequences are also coming into focus.
The most obvious is the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ismail Haniyeh may not have been in charge of day-to-day events on the ground in Gaza – that’s the domain of the military commander Yahya Sinwar – but as the Hamas leader in exile he was a critical interlocutor in negotiations brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt.
American officials had recently suggested that ceasefire negotiations might soon succeed, although a meeting in Rome last weekend did not result in a breakthrough.
But it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake of the assassination of Haniyeh.
All of which begs the question: if this was, as everyone assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out?
Beyond the desire to exact revenge on anyone associated with Hamas, what was Israel hoping to achieve?
Turkey’s foreign ministry has already summed up the likely reaction of many in the region – accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no intention of achieving peace”.