Professors gather at the University of Tehran to protest the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the top political leader of Hamas, on July 31.ARASH KHAMOOSHI/The New York Times News Service
Dennis Horak was Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Yemen from 2015 to 2018 and chargé d’affaires in Iran from 2009 to 2012.
The assassination of the political head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in the early hours of July 31 should come as no surprise to anyone. While Israel has not commented on the incident, there is little doubt who is responsible.
Israel has a long history of targeted assassinations of its opponents, going back decades, including the hunting down of those responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Over the years, dozens of similar assassinations of leading figures in Hamas, Hezbollah and various other Palestinian terror groups, along with their supporters, including senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, have been targeted. These operations were stepped up in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, the resultant Gaza war and Hezbollah’s attacks on Northern Israel.
What is surprising and worrying is that this latest assassination took place in the Iranian capital. In the wake of the unprecedented exchange of direct blows between Israel and Iran in April following an Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate complex in Damascus that killed senior IRGC officers, both sides were able – just – to pull back from the brink of war. This incident will test the restraint of both sides again.
Tehran has already stated its intention and duty to avenge the attack, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promising “harsh punishment” of Israel. While details of how Mr. Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed are still scarce, the fact that the Israelis were able to get to him under the noses of Tehran’s security forces and defences in the heart of their capital is a major embarrassment for the regime. Serious questions are no doubt being asked in Tehran right now, and suspicions regarding leaks and accusations about incompetence will reverberate for some time in leadership and security circles in Iran.
But Tehran cannot let this incident go unanswered. Whether its response can be constrained or blunted as it was in April remains to be seen. The fact that the Haniyeh assassination came so closely on the heels of an Israeli attack targeting a top Hezbollah military commander, Fouad Shukr, in Beirut (a key Iranian regional ally) could result in a more co-ordinated response involving Iran’s regional proxies than was the case in April. Containing such a broad response would be much harder, and the risks of wider escalation would be greater.
The assassination of Mr. Haniyeh, the head of the political wing of Hamas, based in Doha, Qatar, will also be a setback in Gaza ceasefire talks brokered by Qatar and Egypt, both of whom have condemned the attack. As Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, succinctly put it “how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
Israel understands the risks posed by these kinds of operations and their limitations. Assassinated leadership figures are easily replaced and become martyrs to the cause. But the trauma of Oct. 7 raised the risk threshold for Israel. Its calculation is that these operations will send a signal about Israeli power and capabilities, most specifically, their ability to not only locate heavily protected senior leadership figures but also their ability to take them out, including in the centre of Tehran.
This assault on the impunity of senior leadership figures in Hamas and Hezbollah and of Iran itself must be unnerving for Israel’s foes. The surprise attack on the Iranian capital must be seen by defence planners in the Islamic Republic as another cautionary tale. Any Iranian response to the assassination will have to take these defence and intelligence failures into account.
The world got lucky in April. Both sides stepped back from the brink, having made their respective points: Tehran demonstrated its willingness to attack Israel directly (if unsuccessfully), while Israel underscored both a determination and capability to hit inside Iran. Both, ultimately, showed restraint when it counted and backed away from the edge. Will they again? We just don’t know.
Neither side wants a wider war. But mistakes and missteps are part of any conflict. With the number of players currently involved and the various agendas at play, the risks of escalation are very high. The region is a tinderbox. The next errant missile, drone or assassination attempt could be the spark that sets it alight.
There are no easy solutions. An end to the Gaza war would help, but it won’t solve the underlying tensions between Israel and Iran that seem intractable.