The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Wednesday that Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh had been targeted and killed in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway, the IRGC said. Hamas confirmed the death of Haniyeh, who reportedly was assassinated by Israel after attending the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on Tuesday.
Israel has not commented so far on the death of Ismail Haniyeh. The attack was the highest-ranking death of a political figure from Hamas since the fighting started. Israel had previously vowed to strike the leadership of Hamas in response to attacks October 7 that marked the start of the war in Gaza.
The announcement came just hours after Israel claimed responsibility for killing a senior Hezbollah leader in Beirut, a move which threatened to widen the conflict. Haniyeh’s death on Iranian soil raises the stakes of regional tensions at a time when the U.S. is leading an effort to enforce a cease-fire in Gaza.
Haniyeh was born on January 31, 1963, and rose through Hamas’s ranks to become its overall political leader in 2017. The killing of Haniyeh will muddy already delicate cease-fire talks mediated by Arab nations and mark one of the biggest scoops for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the war began.
As this war in Gaza has progressed, Yahya Sinwar has been described as the paramount decision-maker in the strip for Hamas. But Haniyeh remained an influential figure in the group’s consensus-driven leadership.
Haniyeh joins the top Hamas officials killed since the war began. Previously, Israel targeted Hamas’s senior military commander, Mohammed Deif. His death still stands unconfirmed. Back in January, it killed Haniyeh’s deputy, Saleh Arouri, in Beirut. Israel killed three of Haniyeh’s adult sons in April during an airstrike.
Haniyeh’s death can mark a new stage of the Gaza conflict. The situation has been spiraling anyway with the rising tension between Israel and Hezbollah. A recent Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, high-ranked Hezbollah leader, raising the situation once more.
It is a spillover into the wider theatre that both U.S. and Arab diplomats dread, particularly for Israel, into a two-front war with both Hezbollah and Iran; furthermore, such a scenario of conflict would just be too much to handle. The Biden administration has been at pains to keep temperatures down, trying not to let the tensions from the weekend’s violence escalate into a broader war.
The killing of Haniyeh was condemned by Iranian-backed groups, including the Houthis and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority referred to the act as “cowardly.”
Ismail Haniyeh’s death has been a massive turn of events in this continuing conflict and will, as such, affect regional stability, alongside a change in the power dynamics within Hamas’ leadership.
