Iran, Hamas blame Israel for killing of top official, vow to strike back

JERUSALEM – The predawn killing of a top Hamas leader in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday left the entire Middle East on edge, bringing vows of revenge from Iran’s leaders and threatening to derail fragile negotiations for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, 62, a top negotiator in the cease-fire talks who had led the militant group’s political office in Qatar, was killed after he and other leaders of Iranian-backed militant groups had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

Israeli leaders would not confirm or deny whether their country was behind the brazen breach of Iran’s defenses. But Iranian leaders and Hamas officials immediately blamed Israel and vowed to avenge the death of Haniyeh, heightening fears of a broader regional war.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order.

And Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a statement Wednesday, a day after he was sworn into office with Haniyeh seated in the front row: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime regret its action. Iran will defend its sovereignty, dignity, reputation and honor.”

In recent years, Israel has carried out several high-profile assassinations in Iran, rattling the country’s leaders. In November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told reporters that he had ordered Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, to “act against the heads of Hamas, wherever they are.”

Hours before the killing of Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Israeli fighter jets had carried out a separate operation in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, and killed Fouad Shukur, a senior member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Hezbollah has been fighting a low-level war with Israel since October and has backed Hamas, which led a deadly rampage on southern Israel that precipitated the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah confirmed Wednesday that Shukur had been killed in the Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated Beirut suburb. It was not clear how Haniyeh had been killed.

The two strikes shifted the calculus in the Middle East after Israel and Hamas had appeared to be edging closer to a cease-fire in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed over nearly 10 months of war. Negotiators had hoped that such a deal would also lead to a truce between Israel and Hezbollah, which began firing into northern Israel in support of Hamas.

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesperson, said the Biden administration believed it was “too soon to know” what effect the assassination might have on negotiations over a cease-fire and the release of hostages. He said the United States was still in touch with officials from Egypt and Qatar who had been acting as mediators in the talks.

Now, the focus is on how Hamas and Hezbollah will respond to the attacks on their leaders, how Iran will react to a strike within its territory and whether either reaction will lead to the outbreak of a wider war.

A member of Hamas’ political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzouk, promised that the group would retaliate against Israel, saying the killing of Haniyeh had been “a cowardly act and will not go unpunished,” according to Al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas-run channel.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, also said in a statement that the killing was “a dangerous event” that would have repercussions for the entire region. “The enemy has miscalculated,” the statement added.

In a televised address Wednesday, Netanyahu, who did not mention the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran, struck a defiant tone and said Israel would not bow to external pressure to end the war in Gaza.

“Challenging days are ahead of us,” he said. “Since the attack in Beirut, we hear threats everywhere. Israel will exact a heavy price against any aggression – from any front.”

In a statement carried by Iranian state news media, Khamenei said that avenging Haniyeh’s death was “our duty” because he had been killed on Iranian soil. He promised to deliver “a severe punishment.”

He gave the order to strike back at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guard, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive issues.

Khamenei also instructed leaders from the Revolutionary Guard and the army to prepare plans for an attack and a defense in the event that the war expanded and Israel or the United States struck back, the officials said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused the United States of being a “co-culprit” in the attack on Haniyeh. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a trip to Singapore on Wednesday that the United States had not known about the strike before it happened.

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” he said in an interview with Channel News Asia in Singapore. Blinken said the Biden administration would continue to focus on trying to de-escalate the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Later on Wednesday, a State Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, said the United States was “continuing to urge restraint to all parties to avoid an escalation into a wider regional conflict.”

The State Department also warned Americans on Wednesday not to travel to Lebanon, raising its travel advisory for the country to Level 4, or “do not travel,” from Level 3, or “reconsider travel.”

Lebanese officials appeared increasingly concerned that the assassination of Haniyeh would complicate efforts to contain the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

“I went to bed yesterday thinking that, ‘OK, this can still be managed,’” Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. “But now when I got up this morning and read about Haniyeh, I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s over.’”

Egypt’s foreign minister also condemned the killing in Tehran, calling it a “dangerous escalation.”

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who has been helping to mediate indirect cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel, suggested that Israel had damaged the effort by killing Haniyeh.

“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Al Thani wrote on social media. “Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”

Although Haniyeh was heavily involved in the cease-fire negotiations, U.S. and Israeli officials said that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, had wielded a decisive veto on any cease-fire proposal.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October, said she hoped Haniyeh’s death would not end the talks.

“Eliminating Haniyeh must not lead to the thwarting of the deal, passing a death sentence on our loved ones in captivity,” Zangauker said on social media.

In Gaza, some Palestinians said they worried that the assassination could further stall cease-fire negotiations, while others said that his death was of no concern, given the scale of their misery.

“He didn’t go through the suffering of displacement or hunger or feel any of these things we are feeling,” Reda Shahyon, a 42-year-old mother of two in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, said of Haniyeh. “He was sitting in a mansion, dignified, while we were dying of hunger and thirst and humiliation.”

Analysts said Hamas would look to quickly replace Haniyeh as the leader of the group’s political wing. “Hamas will survive,” said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. “They have plenty of other leaders.”

Some analysts said the assassination could provide a way out of the war by giving Netanyahu the ability to claim a major victory and agree to a cease-fire. But in his speech Wednesday, Netanyahu, who has vowed to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, indicated that Israel was not ready to end its offensive in Gaza.

“For months, people haven’t stopped telling me ‘end the war,’” he said. “I didn’t surrender to these voices then, and I will not now.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.