Hamas’ top political leader was killed Wednesday by a predawn airstrike in the Iranian capital, Iran and the militant group said, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risked escalating into an all-out regional war.
Iran’s supreme leader vowed revenge against Israel.
Israel, which kept silent about the strike, had pledged to kill Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran — and hours after Israel targeted a top commander in Iran’s ally Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
The assassination was potentially explosive amid the region’s volatile, intertwined conflicts because of its target, its timing and the decision to carry it out in Tehran. Most dangerous was the potential to push Iran and Israel into direct confrontation if Iran retaliates. The U.S. and other nations scrambled to prevent a wider, deadlier conflict.
In a statement on his official website, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said revenge was “our duty” and that Israel had “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” by killing “a dear guest in our home.”
Bitter regional rivals, Israel and Iran risked plunging into war earlier this year when Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April.
Iran retaliated, and Israel countered in an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle before it spun out of control.
Haniyeh’s killing also could prompt Hamas to pull out of negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in the 10-month-old war in Gaza, which U.S. mediators had said were making progress.
And it could inflame already rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which international diplomats were trying to contain after a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Israel carried out a rare strike Tuesday evening in the Lebanese capital that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander allegedly behind the rocket strike.
Hezbollah, which denied any role in the Golan strike, said Wednesday it was searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was hit in a Beirut suburb. The strike killed three women and two children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House to Haniyeh’s death. A key question was whether Israel told the U.S., its top ally, ahead of time.
Asked about Haniyeh’s killing, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “This is something we were not aware of or involved in.” Speaking to Channel News Asia, Blinken said he would not speculate about the impact on cease-fire efforts. “But I can tell you that the imperative of getting a cease-fire, the importance that that has for everyone, remains.”