The Wall Street Journal
Killing of two Israeli Enemies Puts Middle East on Brink of Wider War
Story by Summer S aid, Rory Jones,Carrie Keller-Lynn 4 ( July 31, 2024)
Iran had planned to use this week’s inauguration of its new president to show off its powerful collection of militias. Representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah all gathered in Tehran, where Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh hugged new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian amid chants of “Death to Israel.”
But before the next day dawned, it was Haniyeh who was dead, in a mysterious strike in the Iranian capital that Hamas blamed on Israel. It came just hours after the Israeli military said it had killed a top Hezbollah official with an airstrike in Beirut.
The pair of provocative killings dealt an embarrassing blow to Iran and its self-proclaimed Axis of Resistance. They also have pushed the Middle East to the brink of a wider war that the U.S. has worked tirelessly for months to head off.
“We are on the verge of a large, large-scale escalation,” said Danny Citrinowicz, who served as head of the Iran branch for Israeli military intelligence and is now a fellow with the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “Iran is leading the axis, and they cannot protect one of the leaders of the axis coming for Pezeshkian’s inauguration.”
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The week opened with global diplomats led by the U.S. scrambling to prevent a rocket strike that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from spiraling into a broader war. With Israel under pressure to retaliate forcefully, their efforts were focused on how to find a target that would be important but not so provocative as to force a heavy response, negotiators involved in the process said.
Hezbollah signaled repeatedly that hitting Beirut or a senior official would cross red lines, the negotiators said. When Israel crossed both, U.S. and Arab diplomats involved in efforts to defuse tensions were concerned the violence could escalate.
The strike on Tehran, Hezbollah’s main backer, adds a dangerous new variable to the calculation. Israel hasn’t commented on Haniyeh’s killing. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested Wednesday that Iran would retaliate.
“The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime with this action prepared the ground for a harsh punishment,” he said. “We consider it our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Middle East has teetered on the edge of a regional war since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that left 1,200 people dead and sparked the conflict in Gaza, now in its 10th month. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel the following day, and the two sides have exchanged fire on a near-daily basis since then.
An Israeli strike on Iranian military leaders gathered at a diplomatic building in Damascus in April provoked a massive response by Iran, which fired more than 300 missiles and drones in a rare direct attack on Israeli soil. A coalition led by the U.S. helped Israel fight off that attack, and a limited assault on Iran by Israel ended the exchange and left a wary stasis.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen have fired drones and missiles at Israel, including a drone launched by the Yemen-based Houthi militia that hit Tel Aviv, prompting Israel to bomb a Houthi-controlled Yemeni port.
Killing of Two Israeli Enemies Puts Middle East on Brink of Wider War
Killing of Two Israeli Enemies Puts Middle East on Brink of Wider War
© Hussein Malla/Associated Press
U.S. diplomats have crisscrossed the region in an effort to keep the various strikes and retaliations from escalating.
Whether the killings this week will tip the balance is unclear. Israel is now bracing for responses both on its own territory and on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad, said former Israeli National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror. Iran in the past has targeted Israelis abroad and Hezbollah has targeted Jewish institutions internationally.
Speaking in Singapore, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. wasn’t warned by Israel ahead of Haniyeh’s killing. The U.S. was still focused on getting Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza, Blinken said.
U.S. and Arab mediators have tried for months to negotiate a cease-fire deal to end the fighting in Gaza and return hostages taken on Oct. 7, hoping an agreement would cool the overall tensions in the Middle East.
“All I can tell you right now is that nothing takes away from the importance of getting to the cease-fire,” Blinken said. “We have been working to try to prevent the conflict from spreading.”
Killing of Two Israeli Enemies Puts Middle East on Brink of Wider War
Killing of Two Israeli Enemies Puts Middle East on Brink of Wider War
© zain jaafar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Part of Hamas’s political leadership, Haniyeh was viewed as a more moderate member of the U.S.-designated terrorist group compared with Yahya Sinwar, the movement’s leader in Gaza who is close to its military wing and considered by Israel as the main wartime decision maker.
Haniyeh was pushing to end the fighting in Gaza to ensure the survival of the Islamist group and its influence in the broader Palestinian national movement, according to cease-fire mediators.
His killing and that of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr could tilt the direction of the conflict in Gaza in the favor of more militant voices who have appeared less willing to agree to a cease-fire.
Still, other tense moments during the Gaza war have been contained. Hamas’s deputy political leader, Saleh al-Arouri, also was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut that didn’t draw Hezbollah further into the war.
“I don’t think Iran’s going to go to war over the killing of a Hamas leader in the same way that Hezbollah didn’t react to the Saleh Arouri assassination,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group. But, she said, we’re now in uncharted territory, “so there’s definitely going to be a response.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced growing calls to take a more aggressive approach to deter Hezbollah from firing on Israel’s northern border. Tens of thousands of Israelis who left their homes near Lebanon at the start of the war in Gaza are still displaced, and Hezbollah’s attacks have caused increasing casualties.
Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, said that only in the past few weeks had the Israeli military reached a position where it could shift its attention from Hamas in Gaza to a fight with Hezbollah in the north.
“We’re entering a period of time in the coming months…where Israel needs to take the strategic decision on where this is going in the north,” he said.
The twin killings in less than 24 hours have demonstrated Israel’s strong intelligence, showing it can breach both Iran and Hezbollah’s security defenses, and could now scramble the decision-making of the Axis of Resistance.
Haniyeh’s death is “a high-profile strike done deliberately in Iran to embarrass the Iranians and show the gaping holes in their security and intelligence apparatus,” said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East expert at the U.K.’s Chatham House think tank.
Israel’s military operations in Gaza following the Oct. 7 assault have left more than 39,000 people dead in the enclave, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.
Some Israeli political experts said the killings of Haniyeh and Shukr might provide the space for Netanyahu to de-escalate tensions in the region and wind down the war with Hamas, claiming he has successfully targeted a large part of the group’s leadership.
Israel is suspected of killing Arouri in Beirut in January and the Israeli military earlier this month launched a targeted strike in Gaza on the group’s most senior military commander, Mohammed Deif. Israel has said there is reason to believe the strike achieved its aim but Hamas has said Deif wasn’t killed. Israel also killed Deif’s deputy in a strike earlier this year.
“Netanyahu is building a case that the war is going his way,” said Vakil of Chatham House, giving him a potential opportunity to negotiate a cease-fire from a position of power.
But, she added, “it will take some time to get a cease-fire again, because obviously Hamas will walk away from the table today.”
Michael R. Gordon and Aresu Eqbali contributed to this article.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com
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