Ismail Haniyeh ought to have recognized that Tehran wasn’t a protected place for him to be. What has Israel ever needed to do on Iranian territory that it hasn’t been in a position to accomplish? In 2018, it stole the nation’s complete nuclear archive. In 2020, it killed Iran’s high nuclear-weapons official. In 2022 and 2023, it reportedly kidnapped, interrogated, after which launched safety officers who have been planning actions in opposition to Israeli vacationers within the area—and it did this fully on Iranian soil. Such in depth operations present that Mossad has deeply penetrated Iran’s safety structure, a lot because it has within the hit Israeli TV present Tehran.
Particulars are nonetheless rising in regards to the strike on Haniyeh, Hamas’s highest-ranking political chief, who was killed in Tehran within the early hours at the moment. The assassination comes at an extremely tense second, lower than 24 hours after Israel used an air strike to take out Fuad Shukr, a high Hezbollah official, in Beirut. Hezbollah has not confirmed Shukr lifeless, and Israel has not taken accountability for the assault on Haniyeh. However fingers will naturally level to the nation with each the capability and the motive to go after the Hamas chief.
Israel has a historical past of concentrating on militant leaders behind the killing of its residents. Palestinian militants massacred Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972, and Israel responded with Operation Wrath of God, a string of assassinations of militant leaders everywhere in the world that ended solely in 1988. Israel was at all times going to search out and kill Haniyeh, a frontrunner of the group that perpetrated October 7, essentially the most deadly terror assault within the nation’s historical past.
However the 62-year-old Haniyeh, used to securely hobnobbing with dignitaries in Qatar and Turkey, presumably didn’t anticipate such a brazen try on his life within the Iranian capital, the place he had been staying for a number of days to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. He was killed earlier than the arrest warrant that prosecutors on the Worldwide Felony Courtroom requested for him might be ever issued (the courtroom has additionally requested a warrant to arrest Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu).
The extent of Israeli ease of operations in Iran is jaw-dropping. The Islamic Republic likes to say that even when Iran isn’t democratic, free, or affluent, not less than it’s protected and safe. The regime enrolls tens of 1000’s of males in an alphabet soup of safety forces—and but it will probably’t appear to protect even extremely valued visitors, reminiscent of Haniyeh.
[Read: In the game of spy vs. spy, Israel keeps getting the better of Iran]
The regime’s safety failures could be embarrassing for any sovereign state wherever, however they don’t seem to be exhausting to fathom when you think about the main focus of Tehran’s repressive equipment. Iran’s prisons are full of dissidents, feminists, commerce unionists, and odd people who’ve dedicated such crimes as posting dance movies on-line. Hours earlier than Haniyeh’s assassination, Tehran’s prosecutors pressed costs in opposition to a cartoonist and a journalist for the crime of overtly discussing homosexual and lesbian life in Iran. We Iranians have lengthy recognized that the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is adept at going after its personal residents however can do little when confronted with the navy would possibly of adversaries reminiscent of the USA and Israel.
Iran additionally suffers from a expertise hole in contrast with Israel, which is a powerhouse on this division. In 2020, Israel assassinated a high Iranian safety official close to Tehran utilizing AI-powered remote-controlled expertise to get inside a maximum-security space. An Iranian safety supply based mostly in London, who requested anonymity as a result of he wasn’t licensed to talk to the media, advised me that Israel used equally superior tools to trace Haniyeh. Battered by Western-led sanctions, Iran lacks entry to the means to counteract or compete with Israel’s technological prowess.
Killing Hamas’s high chief in Tehran would have been hair-raising at any time. Coming within the midst of Israel’s cease-fire negotiations with the group on one hand, and an ever-escalating trade of fireplace between Israel and Hezbollah on the opposite, the assassination will naturally ship a shiver down many spines. Is that this a prelude to the broader regional conflict that so many observers have feared these many months?
Ayatollah Khamenei has already referred to as for “a harsh revenge.” Pezeshkian has promised to “make the terrorist occupiers remorse their cowardly act.” And but, many commentators in Iran are calling for prudence. A well known hard-line activist instructed that Israel had carried out the killing as a way to harm Pezeshkian and disrupt potential Iran-U.S. talks. He referred to as on his supporters to chorus from attacking Pezeshkian on this account.
Name me a cautious optimist, however I believe a serious escalation can seemingly be prevented. Iran has few apparent methods of responding proportionally to this assault, and it’s nicely conscious {that a} broader conflagration will put Iran itself at unacceptable threat. Many in Hezbollah will press for additional assaults on Israeli territory, and the trade of fireplace on the Israel-Lebanon border will proceed. The hazard of this main into one thing larger is at all times current, particularly so long as a cease-fire hasn’t been reached in Gaza. However either side have sturdy motives to keep away from an all-out conflict, which might seemingly be the hardest battle in both of their histories.
[Read: The big war no one wants in the Middle East]
Pezeshkian has simply had in regards to the worst first day in workplace potential. He in all probability rose within the wee hours at the moment to chair a gathering of the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council, tasked with responding to those occasions. His inauguration speech to Parliament yesterday promised good neighborly relations and constructive engagement with the West—even whereas it additionally pledged full help for the Axis of Resistance, as Tehran calls the regional community of anti-Israel militias that it funds and arms to the tooth. Haniyeh was sitting within the entrance row for that speech, alongside leaders of different Axis forces, reminiscent of Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Pezeshkian’s verbal assaults on Israel led the chamber to interrupt out in chants of “Demise to Israel” and “Demise to America.”
The brand new reformist president and the broader Iranian institution have simply gotten a stark reminder that their declared program—of enhancing ties with the area and the West whereas concurrently waging conflict in opposition to Israel—rests on a contradiction. They could have to choose one.
