Killing of Israel’s foes in Beirut and Tehran brings shaken region to the edge

The assassinations of a senior Hezbollah leader Tuesday in Beirut, for which Israel immediately claimed responsibility, and of Hamas’ political leader early Wednesday in Tehran, on which Israel has remained silent, sent shock waves through the region with two profound consequences.

First, the killings of two of Israel’s foes have made a cease-fire anytime soon in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza less likely. Second, they have increased the chances that a military response by Iran and its regional “Axis of Resistance” allies could escalate into an all-out regional war that would involve the United States.

The killing overnight of Ismail Haniyeh, the Qatar-based Hamas leader who was engaged in Gaza peace talks and was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, was an embarrassment for Iran. On Wednesday the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed a “severe punishment” of Israel in response.

That assassination came just hours after Fouad Shukur, a senior adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed by a drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Israel said it targeted the commander who ordered a rocket attack Saturday that killed a dozen young people in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

“Israel’s two assassinations, regardless of the reason behind them, were done in [a] deliberately provocative manner – designed to invite escalatory retaliation,” wrote Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

“Unable or unwilling to restrain Israel, US is sleepwalking into a larger war that it doesn’t want,” Professor Nasr wrote on X. “It has put itself in the crazy position of hoping for restraint in Beirut and Tehran.”

Asked Wednesday about the Tehran assassination and its impact on diplomacy, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the killing was “something we were not aware of or involved in,” The Associated Press reported. “But I can tell you that the imperative of getting a cease-fire, the importance that that has for everyone, remains.”

Likewise, the AP quoted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as saying he still had hopes for a diplomatic solution on the Israeli-Lebanon border. “I don’t think that war is inevitable,” he said.

Oct. 7, and after

Conflict has spread across the Middle East since militants of Iran-backed Hamas crossed from Gaza into southern Israel last Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage. Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas by invading Gaza has cost nearly 40,000 Palestinian lives.

That war has pulled in members of Iran’s regional alliance, especially the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which has engaged in calibrated escalations of fire with Israel since Oct. 8. The fighting has forced 60,000 Israelis and 90,000 Lebanese to evacuate from border areas.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, too, have launched missiles and drones repeatedly at Israel and international shipping in solidarity with Hamas, including one drone that struck Tel Aviv July 19 and drew an Israeli airstrike a day later on the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah.

But despite the escalatory moves, an all-out conflict between Israel and Iran and its allies – which would inevitably draw in the U.S., as Israel’s main backer – is not a foregone conclusion. For months, Iran and Hezbollah have made clear their desire to avoid such a significant conflict.

The assassination in Tehran “is unlikely to drag Iran into a wider war. Iranian leaders understand that Israel is achieving tactical wins in the midst of a strategic defeat,” wrote Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an Iran analyst and CEO of Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, an economic think tank.

“Israel is making rash and escalatory moves because it is increasingly isolated, divided, and weak,” Mr. Batmanghelidj wrote on X.

New president’s challenge

Still, Iran’s reform-leaning new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who was sworn in Tuesday at the event Mr. Haniyeh attended, started his tenure by chastising Israel for killing the Hamas leader and vowing a strong Iranian response.

The last time Iran deemed that Israel had crossed a red line – by assassinating a top Revolutionary Guard commander at an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, in April – it sent a wave of more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. It was the first such launch from Iranian soil.

Mr. Haniyeh was deemed a pragmatist in the organization trying to convince Hamas’ military leadership in Gaza, led by Yahya Sinwar, to agree to a cease-fire. His assassination is only the latest embarrassing counterintelligence failure by Iran at the hands of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

For the past decade and longer, the assassinations of more than half a dozen top Iranian nuclear scientists – sometimes in spectacular fashion – and a missile specialist have been widely attributed to Israel. Israeli agents also spirited away a trove of historical nuclear documents from a secret storage site in Tehran.

At a press conference in Tehran Wednesday, Hamas’ deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, cited witnesses who had been with Mr. Haniyeh in Iran as saying the missile that killed him struck him “directly.”

Lebanon and Iran, Mr. Hayya said, “will never leave this unanswered.”

Taylor Luck contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.