Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran early on Wednesday morning, an attack that drew threats of revenge on Israel and fuelled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
The Palestinian Islamist militant group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed Mr Haniyeh’s death. The Guards said it took place hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president.
Although the attack was widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government made no claim of responsibility and said it would make no comment on the killing.
Mr Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, had been the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy as the war set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th raged in Gaza. He had been taking part in internationally brokered indirect talks on reaching a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
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The assassination occurred less than 24 hours after Israel claimed to have killed Hizbullah’s most senior military commander in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in retaliation for a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
[ Michael Jansen: Assassinations leave Middle East shocked and unsettledOpens in new window ]
Two Lebanese security sources confirmed later on Wednesday that the body of Hizbullah operations chief Fuad Shukr had been found in rubble left by an air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The latest events appear to set back chances of any imminent ceasefire agreement in the nearly 10-month war in Gaza between Israel and the Iran-backed Hamas.
Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement that Mr Haniyeh’s killing would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions”. Vowing to retaliate, Iran declared three days of national mourning and said the US bears responsibility because of its support for Israel.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment for itself” and it that was Tehran’s duty to avenge Mr Haniyeh’s death. Iranian forces have already made strikes directly on Israel earlier in the Gaza war.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli government spokesperson declined to comment on the killing of Mr Haniyeh, but said the country was on high alert for any Iranian retaliation.
Spokesperson David Mencer told a briefing with journalists that Israel was committed to Gaza ceasefire negotiations and to securing the release of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken, at an event in Singapore, sidestepped a question on Mr Haniyeh’s killing, saying a ceasefire deal in Gaza was key to avoiding wider regional escalation. He told Channel News Asia that the US had neither been aware of nor involved in the killing.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was not trying to escalate the war but was prepared for all scenarios.
Qatar, which has been brokering talks aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza along with Egypt, condemned Mr Haniyeh’s killing as a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
“Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?” Qatar’s prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on X.
Egypt said it showed a lack of political will on Israel’s part to calm tensions. China, Russia, Turkey and Iraq also condemned it.
Iran’s top security body met to decide strategy in reaction to the killing, a source with knowledge of the situation said.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing, and Palestinian factions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank called for a strike and mass demonstrations.
In Israel, the mood was buoyant as Israelis welcomed what they saw as a major achievement in the war against Hamas. Residents in besieged Gaza, meanwhile, feared Mr Haniyeh’s death would prolong the fighting that has devastated the enclave.
“What a loss. We lost one of our very own,” said Gaza resident Fatima Al Saati.
Another neighbour, Hachem Al-Saati, said: “This news is scary. We feel that he was like a father to us.”
[ Who was the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh?Opens in new window ]
Mr Haniyeh’s most likely successor is Khaled Meshaal, his deputy-in-exile who lives in Qatar, analysts and Hamas officials said. Under Mr Meshaal, Hamas has emerged as an ever-more-important player in the Middle East conflict due to his charisma, popularity and regional standing, analysts said.
Mr Meshaal narrowly survived an attempt on his life in Jordan ordered by Mr Netanyahu in 1997.
Appointed to the senior Hamas job in 2017, Mr Haniyeh moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in the truce talks or to talk to Hamas’s ally, Iran. Three of his sons were killed in an Israeli air strike in April.
His deputy Saleh Al-Arouri was killed in January by Israel, leaving Yehya Al-Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza and the architect of the October 7th attack on Israel, and Zaher Jabarin, the head of the group in the West Bank, in place but in hiding.
That assault by Hamas-led fighters resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people in southern Israeli communities and some 250 people were taken to Gaza as hostages, Israeli tallies say.
In response, Israel launched a ground and air offensive in the coastal enclave that has killed more than 39,400 people, according to Gaza health officials, and left more than two million facing a humanitarian crisis.
No end appears to be in sight for Israel’s campaign there, as the ceasefire talks continue to falter.
The risk of a deepening war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hizbullah has also grown since the strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children in a Druze village on Saturday, and Israel’s subsequent killing of the group’s operations chief. – Reuters