Assassination of Haniyeh will certainly be read in Tehran as a grave provocation
Crowds carry Palestinian flags and photos of Ismail Haniyeh at a rally at Tehran University on 31 July – and it’s a pretty safe assumption that he did – Benjamin Netanyahu has surely taken the biggest military risk since the armed faction launched its attack on Israel nine months ago., the Hezbollah commander it holds responsible for the rocket launch that killed 12 children and teenagers in Majdal Shams on Saturday, it will certainly be read in Tehran as an even graver provocation.
The extra-judicial execution of Haniyeh on Iranian territory makes that an even less safe bet than it already was—and risks dragging Iran itself into the conflict. And it further complicates the fraught negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza – the one development which might have prompted Hezbollah to call off the repeated rocket attacks it started launching in support of Hamas on October 8.
While the risks of assassinating Haniyeh are all too plain, the potential rewards for Israel are a good deal harder to detect at present. Haniyeh, unlike Yahya Sinwar, who replaced him as Hamas’s leader in Gaza, and Sinwar’s co-architect of the October 7 massacres Mohammed Deif, was essentially a politician rather than a fighter.
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