Roving Periscope: By killing Hamas chief in Iran and attacking Lebanon, Israel expands war zone

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, 62, was on Tuesday killed in “a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran”, a day after Israel eliminated another key enemy in Lebanon, thus expanding the war zone in the already fragile Middle East, the media reported on Wednesday.

Haniyeh was “specially designated” as a global terrorist by the United States in 2017 and has been living in exile in Qatar since 2019. At least 60 members of his family, including his children and grandchildren, have been killed in the ongoing war in Gaza. Earlier this year, an Israeli attack killed three of Haniyeh’s sons in northern Gaza.

A day before his assassination, Haniyeh attended the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian. He also met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hours before his killing, the Israeli military claimed to have eliminated a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, in a rare drone strike in Beirut, Lebanon. The twin strikes come at a critical time of the Israel-Hamas war and the ongoing tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, based in Lebanon.

Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed after their headquarters was targeted in Iran, the Palestinian terror group said in a statement.

“Brother, leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his headquarters in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) President,” Hamas said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) confirmed his death, saying Haniyeh’s residence in Tehran was “hit” and he was killed along with a bodyguard. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei “wowed” revenge on Israel, the media reported.

“With condolences to the heroic nation of Palestine and the Islamic nation and combatants of the Resistant Front and the noble nation of Iran, this morning (Wednesday) the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of the Islamic Resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran, and following this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” the IRGC statement read.

“This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas,” said the group’s official Sami Abu Zuhri.

Reacting to Haniyeh’s killing, Israeli Minister Amichay Eliyahu posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “This is the right way to clean the world from this filth.”

Israel had vowed to kill Ismail Haniyeh and destroy the Hamas group after the October 7, 2023 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians. Tel Aviv’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has since killed at least 39,400 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal. Considered a pragmatist, he lived in exile and split his time between Turkey and Qatar.

He had traveled on diplomatic missions to Iran and Turkey during the war, meeting both the Turkish and Iranian presidents. He maintained good relations with the heads of the various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas.

Haniyeh joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.

Hamas is part of the “axis of resistance” of Iran-backed armed groups arrayed against arch-foe Israel around the Middle East. Tehran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s health ministry said that three people, including two children, were killed and 74 wounded in a strike the Israeli military described as a “targeted assassination operation” against a Hezbollah commander in southern Beirut.

The killings come when United States President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to push Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary cease-fire and hostage release deal.

He left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and was living in exile in Qatar. It was not he but the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the October 7 attack in Israel which sparked the latest Israel-Hamas war.

Haniyeh was the tough-talking face of Hamas’ international diplomacy as the war with Israel raged on in Gaza for nearly 10 months, and had been residing in Qatar to participate in peace talks. Despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the Iran-backed group inside Gaza.

The United States and Israel did not comment on Haniyeh’s death, which has expectedly dealt a major blow to Hamas. On the other hand, the alleged killing of Shukr in Beirut, if true, would also be a major win for Israel as he was the seniormost Hezbollah commander to be killed since 2016 when Mustafa Badreddine, the group’s military commander in Syria, died in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Haniyeh’s killing a “cowardly act and dangerous development,” while senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said the assassination will not go unanswered.

Israel carried out a rare drone strike in Beirut on Tuesday, killing Hezbollah commander Shukr and three civilians, raising the stakes in the escalating tensions with the Lebanese militant group. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the strike killed Fuad Shukr, who “has the blood of many Israelis on his hands. Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price and that there is no place out of reach for our forces to this end.”

Israel had claimed that Shukr was responsible for the rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 people. Hezbollah said civil defense workers were still searching for his body and others under the rubble of the building Israel struck.

Fuad Shukr, also known as Al-Hajj Mohsin, is believed to be an important aide of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, his adviser for wartime operations and in charge of Saturday’s attack. He was also accused by the United States of orchestrating the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. The US State Department had offered a USD 5 million (Rs 40 crore) reward for information about him.

He joined Hezbollah when the group was founded following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that forced the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to leave Lebanon.