The execution of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has made the world a more dangerous place, but it has also sent a powerful message to Israel’s enemies.
Israel is believed to be behind an air strike on a building that was housing Haniyeh who was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president.
Hamas’s leaders will get the message that they are not safe anywhere, but Iran is also being notified that Israel can penetrate the country’s defences at will and strike with precision. If Iran’s leaders decide to escalate war in the region, the assassination of Haniyeh puts them on notice that they face a powerful and surgical opponent.
Iran will almost certainly have to conduct some kind of operation against Israel. It has been attacked on its sovereign soil and retaliation will be expected.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Wednesday it was Tehran’s “duty” to respond and pledged “harsh punishment” for Israel.
The question is what that retaliation will consist of and how belligerent it will be.
On April 1, Israel struck the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital Damascus, killing 13 people including Mohammad Zahedi, a senior commander in Iran’s Quds force, who was “reportedly charged with guaranteeing weapons shipments to Hezbollah.”
The Quds is a listed terrorist organization in Canada and is described as “the clandestine branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial operations, and for exporting the Iranian Revolution through activities such as facilitating terrorist operations.”
Israel would have expected retaliation since attacking the Iranian consulate was as good as attacked Iran.
Two weeks later, Iran struck, firing more than 300 bomb-carrying drones, ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. Israel, in a strange military and intelligence alliance with the U.S., Jordan, Saudia Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, shot down nearly all the missiles.
In that attack, Iran may have calculated that its response was forceful, but limited — Israel’s Iron Dome would have been expected to intercept a lot of the missiles anyway.
But as Tehran ponders what its next move will be, one thing will probably be top of mind for the Supreme Leader — someone is clearly leaking Iranian secrets to the other side.
In the April attack, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Saudis and the UAE passed on intelligence from Iran to the U.S. On Wednesday, Haniyeh could almost certainly not have been targeted without Israel gaining detailed intelligence from inside the country.
However, the danger of these tit-for-tat military operations is the risk of miscalculation. How will Israel respond if a cruise missile does devastate Jerusalem?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already told the country that “challenging days” are ahead and that Israel must be prepared for any scenario. Israel has not commented specifically on the killing of Haniyeh or claimed responsibility for the attack.
Meanwhile, few should mourn the passing of Haniyeh.
As the head of Hamas’s political bureau, he has been living mostly in Doha in luxury since his so-called self-imposed exile from Gaza in 2019. News reports estimate he is worth US$4 billion.
His jet-setting lifestyle contrasts starkly with the conditions in Gaza that he left behind.
Within hours of his death, news reports described him as being a “moderate” within the Hamas terror group.
Yet this is the man who believes wiping Israel off the map is “inevitable.” And that all the deaths in Gaza were necessary because “it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit.”
And in a speech just hours after the October 7 killing of more than 1,100 people, praised the attack and promised more to come. “We will continue the resistance against this enemy until we liberate our land, all our land,” he said from the safety and luxury of Doha.
Moderate seems a strange word for a man openly calling for genocide.
The death of Haniyeh will have repercussions to the protracted negotiations to bring an end to the war Hamas started on Oct. 7 and that has caused so much suffering and death in Gaza.
Haniyeh was one of the negotiators trying to arrange a ceasefire with the fate of the hostages being central to those talks.
Hamas still holds 111 of the 251 hostages seized on Oct. 7, but the Times of Israel reported Tuesday that 39 held in captivity are confirmed dead. Some of the hostages may never been found, the paper reported.
Israel is unlikely to end the talks and abandon the hostages to their fate, but clearly Netanyahu has decided to also be more aggressive and to put the leaders of terrorist groups literally in the crosshairs.
Haniyeh’s death came only a day after Fuad Shukr, the right-hand man to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed by Israel Defense Forces in southern Beirut. Shukr was blamed for Saturday’s rocket strike on a soccer field in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children.
In the last few days Israel has sent out deadly messages to Hamas and Hezbollah, while also striking a blow against its mortal enemy Iran.
But Netanyahu is no fool. He knows that he who sows the wind must reap the whirlwind.
Now Israel and the world must wait to see how bad the whirlwind will be.
National Post