Hamas leader's killing ratchets up conflict, dampens cease-fire hopes

The assassination of Hamas’s top political leader in Tehran is intensifying fears of a wider war while cooling hopes for a deal to release hostages held by the group and end the war in Gaza. 

The killing, coupled with an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, comes just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s high-profile visit to Washington, during which he came under heavy pressure to reach a deal. 

Israel has held back claiming responsibility for killing Ismael Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas outside Gaza, but Iran is blaming Israel for the predawn air strike Wednesday in Tehran. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the U.S. was not aware of or involved in the strike, but he reiterated U.S. efforts to achieve a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, secure the release of an estimated 115 Israeli hostages, and address the dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. 

“I can tell you that the imperative of getting a cease-fire, the importance that that has for everyone, remains,” Blinken said in an interview in Singapore during an Asia tour. 

“So that focus remains, and again, speculating on the impact of any one event, I’ve learned, is not — is not a wise thing to do.”

Haniyeh’s death is not viewed as a major blow to Hamas’s leadership, where the concentration of power is in the hands of Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, but he was a key figure in the high-stakes cease-fire talks with Israel. Those negotiations will likely stall as a protest to his death and as funeral ceremonies are undertaken in Doha, Qatar — so far set for Thursday. 

The U.S. had blacklisted Haniyeh as a specially designated global terrorist in 2018, but his long-time residence in Doha was part of an agreement between Israel, the U.S. and Qatar to keep open channels of communication with Hamas amid years of tenuous truces broken by bursts of open conflict. 

“The administration is in an awkward situation,” said Gerald Feierstein, former U.S. ambassador to Qatar and senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

“They will certainly say Israel has a right to self-defense, blah, blah, blah, but behind the scenes, I suspect that they’re seething.” 

And Haniyeh’s absence from diplomatic talks opens a vacuum that can be filled by voices advocating for widening war, Feierstein added, in a conflict where nearly all fronts are primed for escalation.

“You’ve removed a barrier to the more militant factions within Hamas, to the extent that the political wing is now going to be in disarray while they figure out what to do, that put’s all the initiative in the hands of people who want to continue the fight against Israel,” Feierstein said. 

And the symbolism of the Haniyeh assassination, combined with Israeli strikes on a senior Hezbollah figure this week in Lebanon, raises the risk of an escalatory reaction from Iran and its proxies across the region. 

“This is a huge embarrassment for Iran. This is happening when Haniyeh was a guest of Iran during the inauguration of the new Iranian president, and the Israelis got him, that’s a major embarrassment,” said Ghaith al-Omari, senior fellow in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Al-Omari said the Iran strike also complicates Hezbollah's calculation on its response to Israel's strike in Beirut on Tuesday, which killed a top commander that Israel said was responsible for a rocket attack into the northern Israeli town of Majdal Shams on Saturday that killed 12 children.

“Before this they would have reacted in a limited way, against Israel for the assassination of Fuad Shukr,” al-Omari continued, referring to Hezbollah’s top commander. 

“Now I feel they’ll have to react more comprehensively.” 

Neomi Neumann, a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and former head of the research unit for Israel’s Security Agency, the Shin Bet, said Israel is sending a clear message to Iran by hitting Haniyeh in Tehran: that Jerusalem holds the Islamic Republic responsible for all the actions of its proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. 

“I don’t think that now we’re talking about revenge, we’re talking about design, the new deterrence and the new relationship in the Middle East,” she said.

“The connection hitting Haniyeh in Iran is a message to Iran: we know you are the head of this coalition and coordinate and direct these proxies. This was a good target.”

All eyes are now turning to how Iran responds. In April, the U.S. helped coordinate a coalition of European, Arab and Gulf countries to help defend Israel against an unprecedented Iranian attack that was launched in retaliation for Israel’s killing of two Iranian generals in a Damascus suburb. 

“I think the U.S. can try and message the Iranians privately and try to get them not to take extreme measures, they’re going to be looking for some way to retaliate, whether that’s, again, through proxies or directly, hard to see,” Feierstein said. 

“For the Saudis and the other Gulf states, they, like [the U.S.], have been particularly concerned about the possibility of drawing Iran into the conflict, which they don't want to see and would have implications for their security.”

The Biden administration sees a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas as the best way to calm overall tensions in the region — with Hezbollah’s chief Hasan Nasrallah earlier saying the group would hold fire on Israel if the fighting in Gaza ends. 

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday the strikes in Lebanon and Iran were “not helpful” to lowering the regional temperature. 

The U.S. also wants to use the cease-fire to transition to a Palestinian civilian administration to take over governing the Gaza Strip and lay the foundations for a pathway to a Palestinian state. 

Such an achievement would clear the way for Saudi Arabia to establish ties with Israel, cementing a new security partnership to push back against Iran’s influence and malign activity in the Middle East. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long been criticized for prioritizing the military campaign against Hamas over diplomatic efforts to secure a cease-fire. During a high-profile visit to Washington last week, Netanyahu barely mentioned efforts to achieve a deal in a speech to Congress, even as families of hostages said they left a meeting between the prime minister and President Biden optimistic that a deal was within reach. 

Still, Israeli officials have made clear that no Hamas leader is off-limits and Haniyeh's trip to Tehran could have provided an opportunity Israel was unlikely to see happen again. 

“I can’t say it’s a bad thing that Haniyeh is no longer with us, but a lot of us are wondering if now is the correct time to do it,” says Maya Roman, whose cousin Carmel Gat remains captive in Gaza.

“Netanyahu has been arguing for a very long time that the military pressure is going to work. I have to say, personally, I was quite skeptical of it and I think the harm that we’re seeing to the Palestinian population is in my view wrong,” she continued. 

“This is his last chance to prove that military pressure is the way to secure a deal. And it seems so far it's not the direction it's going. I will be so glad to be proven wrong. I really hope to be proven wrong.”

—Updated at 4:33 p.m.