WASHINGTON — When Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political chief, was killed in a targeted strike in Iran, it sent shockwaves through the region, and across Israel, which is suspected of carrying out the assassination.
The strike comes just a day after Israel killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander, in Beirut. Shukr’s killing was in retaliation for a deadly Hezbollah missile attack on Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Golan Heights, in which 12 children and youths were killed.
The details of Haniyeh’s assassination — and its fallout — are still not known. But here, scholars and analysts give their immediate views on what might happen next, how Iran might respond and how this affects efforts to free the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
Israel has slogged through nearly 10 months of war in Gaza, but the strikes on Shukr and Haniyeh reestablish Israeli deterrence, giving Israel the upper hand it enjoyed in the region for decades before Oct. 7, said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research for the Israel Policy Forum, which has historically advocated for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“Hopefully, it helps restore some of Israel’s deterrence, which was gravely affected and undermined [on] Oct. 7,” said Efron, who lives in Israel. “It demonstrates not just to Hamas but to the whole Iran-led Axis of Evil that no one is invulnerable, and that no place is out of Israel’s long reach.” The aforementioned “axis” is thought to consist of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, a Yemeni terror group that has shot projectiles at Israel and is also funded by Iran.
Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that advocates for a more aggressive U.S. policy toward Iran, said the assassination in Tehran likely marks an end of the road for Hamas. He noted that Haniyeh was only the latest victim in a series of successful Israeli assassinations targeting the terror group’s leaders in Gaza and beyond.
He added that Israel has also conquered the strip of territory between Egypt and Gaza, which was crucial to Hamas’ supply lines.
“Hamas’ senior ranks have been hollowed out by the Israelis,” he said. “And add to that that somewhere around 20,000 of Hamas’ 30,000 fighters are either killed or injured. As you start to look at all of these data points, it begins to consolidate a picture that Hamas is in trouble and is not likely to come out of this in one piece.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, delivering an address to the nation Wednesday night, did not acknowledge responsibility for Haniyeh’s killing, but said his strategy of focusing on wiping out Hamas — instead of focusing on inking a deal to release hostages still held by Hamas — was vindicated.
“For months, there has been no week in which they have not told us – at home and abroad – to end the war. ‘End the war’ because we have exhausted what can be achieved and it is impossible to win in any case,” he said. “If we gave in to this pressure – we would not have eliminated senior Hamas leaders and thousands of terrorists.”
Crushing Hamas in Gaza allows Israel to focus on Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been firing missiles into Israel since shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, said Schanzer.
“We might be looking at a pivot that Israel is going to be able to make if it wants to head north to fight that battle,” he said. “It probably can, with Hamas being in the position that it’s in.”
Lebanon is where an escalation might occur, said Harel Chorev, a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, has no vested interest in escalation because it could destroy the military and civilian infrastructure Hezbollah has built up over decades, Chorev said. But he added that Nasrallah won’t be able to let the assassination of Shukr, his military chief, go unpunished.
“This might drag the whole area into war because of miscalculation, because of overreacting or whatever, into an escalation that both sides currently don’t want,” Chorev said.
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has close relationships with Israeli officials, said Hamas, depleted in Gaza, would likely intensify attacks on Israel from Lebanon. He added that the group could contemplate attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets outside of Israel, a strategy it has until now mostly avoided.
“Only once, maybe twice before depending on how you counted, has Hamas ever come close to carrying out an external operation,” Levitt, who has a background in U.S. intelligence, said in a virtual press conference with reporters. “And I could see them now saying, ‘OK, these guys have gone too far.”
One country that’s expected to respond is Iran, which already exchanged fire with Israel earlier this year.
“Following this bitter, tragic event which has taken place within the borders of the Islamic Republic, it is our duty to take revenge,” tweeted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and author of “Inside The Middle East: Entering a New Era,” said Iran would likely retaliate through proxies.
“There is already likely a discussion going on between Iran and Hezbollah on the scope of such a strike, which would likely target a significant Israeli military installation rather than civilian communities or civil infrastructure, with advanced weaponry and or tactics,” he wrote in an email.
Chorev said he expected Iran to avoid a direct attack, which would likely draw in the United States and put its nuclear weapons program at risk.
“I don’t see them jeopardizing all their interests, their nuclear infrastructure, because it’s always on the table,” he said. The United States led an international coalition in backing up Israel in repelling a massive number of missiles Iran launched at Israel in April.
Michael Koplow, the Israel Policy Forum’s chief policy officer, said targeting Haniyeh made sense — except it likely doomed any imminent release of the hostages.
“If you have the opportunity to get rid of the leader of Hamas, you take it, even with the heightened risk of doing it in Tehran,” he said. “The mistake here isn’t killing Haniyeh, but having missed [past] opportunities for a hostage deal, which now becomes even more unlikely.”
Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who was an adviser to the Palestinian peace negotiating team from 1999 to 2001, said Hamas would pull out of negotiating a ceasefire for hostages deal now, but would likely return to talks.
“Hamas will have no choice right now but to step away from the hostage talks in the short term, that my view will be only performative at the end of the day,” he said on the virtual press conference. He said Haniyeh was the chief negotiator, but the man calling the shots is Yahyeh Sinwar, the Hamas military chief who remains alive and hidden in Gaza.
“The calculation of Sinwar, who is the one that matters, has not really changed, and once things die out, they will find a quiet way to go back,” he said.
The Biden administration would not comment on the Haniyeh assassination, but the National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, made clear on Wednesday that violence in the Middle East did not make the administration’s efforts to achieve a ceasefire for hostage exchange any easier.
“When you have events, dramatic events, violent events, caused by whatever actors, it certainly doesn’t make the task of achieving that outcome any easier,” he said.
