Israel has been on another assassination spree, killing Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh on Wednesday with an airstrike while he was in Tehran for the swearing in of the new Iranian president. Israel also claims to have killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an airstrike on Beirut on Tuesday evening.
Iran and Lebanon will now have to decide how to respond to these incendiary aggressions. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has promised “harsh punishment” for the strike on Iranian soil, appearing to place the attack on the same level as Israel’s assassination of Iranian officials in Damascus this past April which drew a massive drone and missile retaliation from Iran.
“The response to an assassination will indeed be special operations — harder and intended to instill deep regret in the perpetrator,” reads an official statement from an Iranian government Twitter account.
According to Barak Ravid of Axios, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that “Israel does not seek war” but “the IDF remains prepared to respond to any attack by Hezbollah,” which is the sort of victim-LARPing only an Israeli official could perform after two straight high-profile assassination strikes.
Conventional wisdom is that Israel would prefer to avoid a major new war while its forces remain tied up in Gaza, but it certainly isn’t acting like a nation that’s trying to avoid a new war. Or like a nation that’s trying to wrap things up in Gaza, for that matter.
Some interesting commentary on this still-unfolding story:
“Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” tweeted the Prime Minister of Qatar, where Haniyeh had been living prior to his assassination.
“So Israel murders Hamas political leader and key negotiator, Ismael Haniyeh, and wants us to believe it is serious about negotiating a ceasefire?” tweeted Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin. “And it kills him at the inauguration of Iran’s new president Pezeshkian, who campaigned for better relations with the West. Instead of a ceasefire and a regional de-escalation, Netanyahu is gunning for a full-scale regional war.”
“Saying they want a ceasefire and then assassinating the guy they’d negotiate it with is a pretty clear sign of how serious Israel is about diplomacy,” tweeted Ajam Media Collective’s Alex Shams.
“Killing Haniyeh in Tehran immediately after bombing Beirut like… are they willfully instigating a regional war they’re absolutely not prepared to fight or once again radically failing to anticipate the possible consequences of their actions? Either way they are suicidally stupid,” tweeted Christa Peterson.
“There is a secret third option: they know they can’t fight this war but they can make it bad enough that Americans have to,” tweeted Matthew Petti in response.
After all the thunderous applause Netanyahu received for his deceitful genocide apologia speech before Congress last week, this does not at all seem like an unreasonable expectation. We’ve seen nothing from Washington these last ten months to suggest that it would leave Israel to defend itself should a series of escalations lead to a major war with Lebanon and/or Iran.
We shall see, I suppose.
Reprinted with permission from Caitlin’s Newsletter.
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