Iran’s new president was sworn in on Tuesday. Although he is supposedly a “moderate”, his inauguration was accompanied by the usual cries of “Death to Israel”. Death came a few hours later, but not to Israel, but to Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the ceremony.
Haniyeh was killed in an explosion (it is not entirely clear whether it was a bomb or a missile) at the official Iranian residence where he was a guest. No one has yet claimed responsibility and no one doubts that Israel was behind the explosion.
That the leader of one of Iran’s many regional proxies, through which it spreads death and destruction throughout the Middle East, should be assassinated in his own capital is, without a doubt, a huge humiliation. It shows the extent to which Israeli intelligence services have penetrated Iran’s internal security.
Of concern, too, is the well-being of Iran’s leaders. After all, if the Israelis can clinically eliminate such a prominent ally on Iran’s own soil (they knew its precise location), how safe are Tehran’s own autocrats, even behind the high walls of the compounds packed with armed guards where they live and work?
Perhaps the death of Iran’s former president, whose helicopter fell from the sky in May, was not an accident after all.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion (it is not entirely clear whether it was a bomb or a missile) at the official Iranian residence where he was staying as a guest.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, met with Haniyeh, who had traveled to Iran for the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new leader.
On the same day that Haniyeh was assassinated, the Israelis had already demonstrated their ability to decapitate the leaders of their enemies.
An airstrike in southern Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, the top military commander of Hezbollah, another terrorist group (this one based in Lebanon) that Tehran arms and finances.
Shukr, who had a $5m (£3.9m) US bounty on his head since he played a key role in the bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, had more recently been responsible for building up Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of missiles, 6,000 of which have fallen on Israel since Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel on 7 October.
Last Saturday, one of their missiles landed on a football field in the Golan Heights, killing 12 young men and wounding others. They would be their last victims. The Israelis saw to it.
Israel also confirmed what we already knew: that it had been behind the assassination of Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military chief, in southern Gaza. If the top brass of Hamas and Hezbollah had any doubt that these were identified men, they now have no reason to ignore it.
The Israelis joked that the US should give them a $5 million check for killing Shukr, but Washington was too busy wringing its hands to pick up a pen.
All these killings, the Biden administration murmured, made the chances of a ceasefire even more difficult. In particular, Haniyeh had been a relative moderate, we were told, a crucial figure in talks with Hamas to free the 115 hostages still held in atrocious conditions. There was even speculation that Haniyeh might have emerged as the leader of a new, unified Palestinian pseudo-state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinians gathered yesterday during the funeral procession for Hamas leader Haniyeh
This had more to do with President Biden’s desperation for any kind of peace deal in the final days of his administration than any relationship to the facts.
Haniyeh played a pivotal role in Hamas’s brutal takeover of Gaza. From five-star hotel suites in Turkey and Qatar, he raised funds to finance Hamas’s underground terror infrastructure, which made October 7 possible. He celebrated the atrocities of that day and dragged out hostage negotiations.
The idea that Israelis of any orientation – hawks, doves or those in between – would agree to reward Hamas for October 7 with a central role in any new Palestinian entity is nonsense.
Western governments, including our own, talk again and again about the need for a ceasefire, the release of the hostages, and the revival of the two-state peace initiative. But even if there were a ceasefire and the hostages were released, no one has any idea what would happen next, what a two-state solution would look like, or who would lead it. If Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah were still intact, the chances of hostilities simply resuming would be high.
Western governments are increasingly complaining that if Israel continues its “reckless” hard line, the conflict risks engulfing the entire region. For a start, it already affects most of the Middle East. It has spread to Jordan, Yemen, the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, largely because of hostilities by Iran, its allies and inevitable Israeli retaliation.
But outside of Gaza and Israel, no country has been “drawn into” the conflict, which has been contained and remains relatively low-key.
There is always the risk of escalation, but Israel’s only regional enemy capable of doing so is Iran, and after this week its leaders will be more cautious than ever, no matter how loud and bellicose their rhetoric. Not for the first time, Iran’s representatives will find that their role is to do Tehran’s bidding, not the other way around.
Nor is there a great risk that the current conflict will become “globalized.” Conflicts in the Middle East used to have dire consequences for the rest of the world, but times have changed. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs, which threatened Israel’s very existence, Arab oil producers, led by the Saudis, instituted an oil embargo in retaliation for Western support of Israel.
Within months, oil prices quadrupled, gas stations ran out of gas, inflation soared (and so did unemployment), and Western economies sank into recession. We learned a new word: stagflation (stagnant economy, rising prices).
There were those who feared a repeat of this, but the West is not as dependent on Arab oil as it was 50 years ago and Arab oil producers are not as sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. The Saudis and other Gulf states fear Iran far more than Israel, with which they are building closer economic and security ties.
Oil prices also soared after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the pro-Western Shah was replaced by the ayatollahs, whose medieval Islam still dominates Iran, impoverishing a people who should be among the most prosperous in the world.
Once again, the West has been plunged into recession as a regional crisis has had global consequences. But today we do not buy oil from Iran and the rest of the Arab world is largely united with the West against Tehran. Of course, Iran can count on the support of dictatorships such as Russia and China, which meddle in the Middle East to undermine the West’s position.
But neither side has strategic interests in the region that are important enough to go to war over. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and does not need another front. China’s eyes are on Taiwan.
The Middle East remains a tinderbox, but it no longer has the combustible power needed to ignite the rest of the world. That does not make current events any less tragic. Gaza is a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight. Israel remains in danger from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and its other allies.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to recover the hostages or to finish off Hamas. He is unpopular at home and abroad, but those who would replace him lack fresh solutions, as do Western politicians who rant from the sidelines, largely to placate pro-Palestinian protesters and Muslim voters, rather than contribute constructively to a solution.
We are at a stalemate with no way out in sight. A bleak outlook for those at the centre of the conflict and for the wider region. The poorest Palestinians are suffering the most and there is real concern in Israel about how long it can remain at a stalemate without damaging not only its economy but also its democratic fabric.
But is all this a prelude to World War III? I don’t think so. There’s enough to worry about without resorting to imaginary monsters.