Israel's killing of Ismail Haniyeh makes the Middle East more dangerous

The assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 July, which came one day after the killing of Hezbollah’s commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, leaves Iran’s leadership humiliated.

That the Israeli assassination occurred in Tehran on the day of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration speaks to Israel’s continued ability to penetrate Iran’s security apparatus.

In light of these attacks in the Lebanese and Iranian capitals targeting high-ranking figures in the ‘axis of resistance’, the Middle East’s conflict dynamics are intensifying.

When it comes to regional security as well as the global economy, the stakes are high. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have the potential to expand and internationalise very quickly and to a significant degree.  

How Iran and its regional allies - chiefly Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis - respond will have a huge impact on the Middle East’s immediate future. Experts agree that it is practically impossible to imagine Tehran not responding in some manner.

“This assassination is the culmination of multiple high-profile assassinations and major attacks against axis forces throughout the region, and thus is likely to prompt an axis-wide coordinated retaliation against the US and Israel,” said Dr Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, in an interview with The New Arab.

“Israel has conducted covert operations and assassinations on Iranian soil before. But killing a senior foreign leader is particularly humiliating to the Revolutionary Guards on its own home turf,” he added.

"Iran was hoping that its perilous gamble in April, launching a massive direct strike from its own territory against Israel, would deter its archfoe from conducting such humiliating strikes against its interests and assets. It now probably feels compelled to up the ante to achieve that objective.”

Nonetheless, Iran’s interest is still in avoiding an all-out war with Israel, especially given that such an extreme scenario would almost certainly entail Washington’s direct involvement.

Iranian authorities will be challenged to find a way to restore deterrence capabilities that protect the Islamic Republic’s image, prestige, and credibility without being drawn into a full-scale war in the region that Tehran has taken steps to avoid since 7 October 2023.

Having met with Haniyeh in Tehran shortly before the Hamas leader’s killing, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has declared that Iran has no choice but to take revenge against Israel.

“If Iran fails to respond in a way that would restore deterrence, its credibility in the eyes of its regional partners and its own sense of safety will suffer tremendous damage,” explained Dr Vaez.

There is a “high probability of a response by Iran and Hezbollah - either separate or together - to the recent developments,” Dr Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told TNA.

“So that might actually open a whole new phase of the conflict in the region, [which would] in a very pessimistic scenario make the war in Gaza look like a minor thing if [there will be] an actual war, including Iran and Hezbollah, on one side, and Israel supported directly by the US, on the other,” he added.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations released a statement explaining that the Islamic Republic will wage “special operations” in response to Haniyeh’s assassination. This seems to suggest that Tehran will respond differently than how it did following Israel’s razing of an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus in early April.

“I think the Iranians will take a bit of time to digest this and focus on closing the huge internal security lapses that allowed it to happen. I don’t foresee a repeat of the April missile and drone barrage on Israel, which was meant to deter future breaches of Iranian sovereignty but obviously failed to do so,” Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, told TNA.

Israel's motivations for killing Haniyeh

Killing Haniyeh is highly problematic for efforts to push ahead with a ceasefire and hostage release deal almost ten months into the Israeli war on Gaza, which is a point made by Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

This is all intentional and it is evident that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to sabotage any chances of diplomacy prevailing in Gaza.

Haniyeh was “one of the ones pushing for a deal and compromise, and because of his stature he was able to speak to the guys in Gaza in a more convincing way than other guys,” an Arab diplomat told the Financial Times. “You’ve lost a big voice who was influential and could have a strong say internally within Hamas and was for a deal.”

As Dr Azizi emphasised, the Haniyeh assassination “complicates everything” in the Middle East, greatly dimming the prospects for productive diplomacy.

“Regarding the whole situation in the region and different actors involved, it is really difficult to imagine that Hamas would agree to any sort of ceasefire, at least in the short-term, because Haniyeh was the head of the political office which is in charge of the negotiations and is supposed to basically act as a bridge between the military branch of the organisation and the outside world,” said the Berlin-based Iran expert.

“It’s clear that…Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire. He wants a ‘total victory’ which means perpetual war,” explained Slavin.

Iran and the West

Haniyeh’s killing has potentially huge implications for Iran’s relationships with the US. As Negar Mortazavi, a Washington-based Iranian journalist, host of The Iran Podcast, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, said in a TNA interview, the inauguration is a “very important political event in Iran”.

That factor made this assassination’s timing all the more significant and humiliating for Iran, especially given that Haniyeh was a foreign leader killed in the heart of the Iranian capital.

As a “reformist”, Pezeshkian has promised better ties with the West, endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and called for renewed engagement with the US. Although officials in Washington claim to have not known about Israel’s operation to kill the Hamas leader in Tehran, the Iranian leadership will probably never believe that the US had no role in it.

Therefore, it will be much more difficult for Pezeshkian to do anything that can open a door to diplomacy with the US.

At the same time, an Iranian response that entails hitting a high-value target on Israeli soil with the intention of demonstrating symmetry could eliminate any hope for officials in Washington to be even slightly receptive to any diplomatic outreach by Tehran.

“If Iran and its allies are in an open conflict with Israel, they can’t have diplomacy with the US,” noted Mortazavi.

Other experts share this assessment. “The attack also injects a major crisis for Iran’s new president on his first day on the job. Pezeshkian ran on a pledge to rebalance Iran’s foreign relations, but a regional escalation against a key US ally will shut the already extremely narrow window there might have been for diplomatic engagement,” offered Dr Vaez.

“That is especially true if Iran’s allies in Iraq and Syria ramp up attacks against US forces in the region, which in recent days have seen an uptick after a three-month lull.”

"Netanyahu is determined to bring Washington into a wider conflict in the Middle East"

Dragging in the US

By waging this attack in Tehran, Israel’s strategy seeks to provoke Iran into escalation. At least up until now, the Islamic Republic has shown considerable restraint toward Israel in the post-7 October environment.

Such dynamics increase the chances of the US involving itself more directly. This is precisely the aim of Netanyahu and his extremist allies in Israel who are against any form of de-escalation or serious diplomacy. Understanding that Israel can’t achieve its maximalist goals vis-à-vis Iran and Lebanon without direct US involvement, Netanyahu is determined to bring Washington into a wider conflict in the Middle East.

“Double assassinations in Beirut and Tehran, hitting two major capitals, hitting two senior leaders of two main factions in the resistance on the same day, doing it on the day of the inauguration of the new Iranian president - all of these are provocations designed to escalate and prompt the other side to also escalate,” Mortazavi told TNA.

“Right now, the ball is in Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah’s court and however they respond will show us the next steps,” she added.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics.

Follow him on Twitter: @GiorgioCafiero