Israel has claimed responsibility for the death of a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and was allegedly behind the assassination of a key Hamas leader in Iran.
Israel said on Tuesday that it killed Fuad Shukr, an advisor to the secretary general of Hezbollah, in retaliation for a rocket attack in Golan Heights that killed 12 people, including children.
“The IDF will not tolerate terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians,” an IDF spokesperson said.
The retaliatory strike deep into Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut was followed hours later with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was head of Hamas’s political bureau. Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, when he was killed.
Israel has not taken responsibility for the killing, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel “will exact a heavy price from any aggression against us on any front.”
Israel has pledged to kill more Hamas leaders over the October 7 terrorist attack that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage.
With the ongoing war in Gaza, the escalating situation between Hezbollah and Israel, and the killing of a Hamas leader in Iran, the Middle East is at risk of a broader conflict. National Post spoke to Dr. Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and an international fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, about what could happen next. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
How significant was the airstrike on Beirut?
This is certainly a strong but calibrated response, and it does a number of things. It shows that the IDF and the Israeli government have the ability to strike their enemies and reach their enemies deep inside of Lebanon. What it also does is create a heightened level of anxiety for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and it requires them to adjust to the new realities of having a key member of their organization removed from the battlefield. So, while this will not result in the end of Hezbollah, it leads to, potentially, disorganization, disorientation and a potential slowdown of its planning and operational capabilities.
Will Hezbollah react to this attack?
I would expect that they will. It would be hard for them not to, given what a significant player he was. That said, I think both sides, Hezbollah and Israel, want to avoid an all-out war, so I would imagine that their response will also be relatively calibrated. But that is more of a wish for people, rather than a necessary, or an inevitable, outcome. We don’t know what that response is going to look like. People hope that there’s no response or that there’s a fairly limited response, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Hezbollah fired roughly 6,000 rockets into Israel. Over the last 10 months, they have killed or wounded people very frequently, including 12 children last weekend in northern Israel. So, I would expect to see more of that, and they may also look to carry out other operations. They’ve participated in everything from rocket attacks, to suicide bombings, to a variety of other sort of damaging activity, dangerous and destabilizing activities. So, we’ll have to see what happens here. But I would imagine that it’s going to be coming relatively soon.
Is a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel inevitable?
I’m still of the belief that both sides want to avoid that, and I believe that there are also international mediators who want to avoid that as well, such as the United States. So I don’t think all out war is inevitable, but it’s also not, necessarily, unlikely. And I think it really will depend on what happens here in the next couple of weeks.
Can diplomacy reduce tensions in the region?
It could be an effective tool to reduce the tension, but you still have rockets coming into Israel, you still have Hamas in Gaza, and you still have hostages being held by terrorists. And until these issues are dealt with, I’m not sure how far diplomacy can get — either side. There are still key objectives that Israel needs to achieve, namely, uprooting Hamas to the best of its ability, and liberating the hostages, so you can’t talk your way into some of the successes Israel needs to achieve. You need to do that from military maneuvering to a certain extent, and so that’s what you’re going to see here. Until those things happen, diplomacy can only get them so far, and they’ve had 10 months, and diplomacy hasn’t done anything. So, I’m not holding my breath.
Will the assassination of Haniyeh in Iran stall the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas?
It’s hard to say. I think, you know, Israel is between a rock and a hard place. They want to enter into negotiations, but it’s hard to negotiate with genocidal terrorists. Those people need to be removed, and Israel’s going to keep targeting those people. You could see an escalation here. In a perfect world, they can reach a diplomatic solution and end this, or at least come to some sort of pause in fighting or de-escalation. But you’re dealing with some of the worst people on the planet, and they have hostages that are still being held. They have rockets that are still coming into their country and civilians that are still being killed. And so they have to act accordingly. There’s a war. And Ismail Haniyeh, I’ve said this many times, and the rest of his comrades, the rest of his fellows in Hezbollah, Hamas and all other terrorist organizations, they issued their own death warrants on the morning of October 7, and those death warrants will be completed and carried out, regardless of what other options are on the table. Israel has to get back some of its deterrence. This, to a certain extent, achieves that. It sends a clear message that enemies of Jerusalem are not safe in Beirut, they’re not safe in Israel, in Tehran, and they’re not safe anywhere in the world. It also shows significant weakness in Iran; it shows that they are overly confident. It shows that they cannot protect those individuals that they host, and it probably leads to a heightened sense of anxiety and vulnerability in Iran, in Lebanon and elsewhere. So, it’s a significant setback, it’s a significant development, and it’s not one that I would expect would lead to a de-escalation of the war.
How could the Hamas leader’s death further inflame tensions in the Middle East?
I don’t think it’s going to lead to a de-escalation, that’s for sure. I’m not confident that it’s going to lead to an all-out war or that Iran’s response is going to be devastating, but it almost certainly will lead to an increase in hostilities. Iran will likely respond. Hezbollah will respond, and Hamas will respond to a certain extent. Now, what that looks like? I don’t know, but it’s important for folks to remember, as well. But this isn’t necessarily going to happen in Israel, either. Israel, the U.S. and its allies, have embassies around the world. They have targets of interest to these terrorist organizations around the world. And so, when we talk about escalation, it might not necessarily just be an escalation in the Middle East, it could be an escalation elsewhere, drawing other countries into this that are not regional players.
What does Haniyeh’s death mean for Hamas and the group’s main backer, Iran?
It adds significantly to the cumulative effects of operations that Israel has carried out. Over the last 10 months, they’ve killed numerous very high-level strategic players in both Hezbollah and Hamas. And so, if you look at the whole picture, I think this is probably starting to affect these organizations, operationally and organizationally as well. It’s important to remember, though, that Hamas has a relatively decentralized leadership structure that is designed primarily through consensus. It operates largely through consensus. They have not had an individual leader that has been considered the primary leader for the group since Ahmed Yassin. And so, yes, this disrupts the status quo. This disrupts things for Hamas. But they will find a replacement quickly, and they will get back to work quickly. So, on the one hand, it’s significant as part of the cumulative effects over the last 10 months. On the other hand, it is not going to dramatically erode the capabilities of Hamas.
For Iran, it is a real blow. It’s a revealing embarrassment for them. It’s not something that they’re going to let fly without consequences. So, I would expect a response from Iran could be something akin to what we saw a few months ago with their missile drone barrage targeting Israel. It could be something abroad, I don’t know. Nobody knows, but they will respond, and we just have to wait now and see and hope that that response is not overwhelming or significant, and that it does not lead to a dramatic escalation in hostilities.
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