Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed revenge on Israel over the killing of Hamas’ political chief.
Khamenei said Israel had “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” after Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a pre-dawn air strike in the Iranian capital Tehran.
The Iranian leader said in a statement on his official website: “We consider his revenge as our duty,” adding Mr Haniyeh had been “a dear guest in our home”.
The shock assassination risks escalating the Israel-Hamas conflict even as the US and other nations scramble to prevent an all-out regional war.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which had vowed to kill Mr Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Mr Haniyeh recently (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
The strike came just after Mr Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President in Tehran.
The dramatic killing threatens to reverberate on multiple fronts, with direct retaliation from Iran one possibility.
New Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed his country would “defend its territory” and make the attackers “regret their cowardly action”.
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The two bitter regional rivals had an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil in April after Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle of retaliation before it spun out of control.
An influential Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy is due to hold an emergency meeting on the strike later on Wednesday.
Hamas could pull out of negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the 10-month-old war in Gaza, which US mediators had said were making progress.
And the killing could enflame already heightening tensions between Israel and Iran’s powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah – which international diplomats were trying to contain after a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Turkey condemned Mr Haniyeh’s killing (AP)
Hours before the Tehran strike, Israel carried out a rare strike in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander allegedly behind the Golan Heights rocket strike.
Hezbollah, which denied any role in the Golan strike, said it is still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was hit in a Beirut suburb that is the group’s stronghold.
Hamas said earlier: “Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free people of the world, brother leader Ismail Ismail Haniyeh a martyr.”
In another statement, the group quoted Mr Haniyeh as saying that the Palestinian cause has “costs” and “we are ready for these costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, and for the sake of God Almighty, and for the sake of the dignity of this nation”.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the wake of the October 7 assault in Israel (AP)
There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the killing of Mr Haniyeh.
Asked by reporters in Manila about the Tehran strike, US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin said he had no “additional information to provide”. But he expressed hope for a diplomatic solution on the Israeli-Lebanon border.
“I don’t think that war is inevitable,” he said. “I maintain that. I think there’s always room and opportunity for diplomacy, and I’d like to see parties pursue those opportunities.”
In the West Bank, the internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Mr Haniyeh’s killing, calling it a “cowardly act and dangerous development”.
Political factions in the occupied territory called for strikes in protest at the killing.
Turkey has strongly condemned the “heinous assassination” of the Hamas leader, attributing the killing to the Israeli government.
A foreign ministry statement said the killing had shown that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “has no intention of achieving peace”.