LONDON: Iran was deeply hurt by the assassination of Haniyeh and cannot afford to not respond in some way. If it doesn’t, it could be seen as an invitation for Israel or other countries to act more strongly against Teheran.
It’s now three weeks since Israel assassinated the political leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh, during his visit to Iran’s capital, Teheran. It remains unclear exactly how Haniyeh was killed, but many reports indicate that he was killed by an explosive device daringly planted by an Israeli proxy in the room he was staying in months before he arrived. Haniyeh’s murder followed the assassination of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander, in a strike by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) the day before. In response to the two assassinations, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned that Iran would apply a “harsh punishment” on Israel. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah also insisted that his movement would respond to the assassination, adding that this could include members of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” located throughout the Middle East. With Israel on high alert, the response so far has been…silence!
So what’s going on?
Two weeks ago, accompanied by loud sonic booms from Israeli jets circling over Beirut, Nasrallah confirmed that his group will respond to Israel “regardless of the consequences” to avenge the murder of his friend and colleague, but keeping Israelis waiting is part of the punishment. “Their government, their army, their society and their occupiers are all waiting”, said Nasrallah, “which is part of the battle.” Making vague threats in an attempt to keep his enemies on their toes is a common tactic Nasrallah has used repeatedly during his 32 years as head of Hezbollah, the “Party of Allah”. He boasts about it regularly in his speeches delivered by video from his bunker. Echoing Nasrallah, Ali Mohammed Naeini, the spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Tuesday that “time is on our side and the waiting period for this response may be prolonged. The Zionists for now must live in instability. Our commanders have the experience and the art of effectively punishing the enemy and will not take hasty action.”
This isn’t the first time that Iran has kept everyone waiting for a response to an attack by Israel. Following the IDF’s onslaught against the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus on 1 April this year, which killed 16 people including the Quds Force commander of the IRGC, Brigadier General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, Teheran’s military response came nearly two weeks later on the night of 13 April. Consisting of a barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles, it was the single largest drone attack ever carried out by any country on another and is the first time that Iran has directly attacked Israel after almost half a century of being arch-enemies. Iran has long been known to possess the largest and most varied missile arsenal in the Middle East, but this was by far the greatest test of its capabilities. Assisted by American, British, French and Jordanian air forces, the IDF used their own Arrow 3 and David Sling missile systems to shoot down many of the incoming weapons, limiting any damage.
Iran was deeply hurt by the assassination of Haniyeh and cannot afford to not respond in some way. If it doesn’t, it could be seen as an invitation for Israel or other countries to act more strongly against Teheran; a lose-lose situation. The long delay might be because Iran and its proxy Hezbollah want to coordinate their response with the Lebanese group, which is much closer to Israel, attacking first to try and overwhelm Israeli air defences, followed by missiles from Iran. A more likely reason, however, is political. Iran and Hezbollah are facing international pressure to limit their response to one that Israel can absorb without requiring the type of major retaliation that would further inflame the situation. There are leaks from Teheran that Iran’s new and moderate President, Masoud Pezeshkian, favours longer-term operations that would avoid jeopardising negotiations with Washington. In doing so, Pezeshkian is at odds with the IRGC which insists on a robust response.
Russia has also joined efforts to defuse the situation. Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, visited Teheran in early August for meetings with President Pezeshkian. “Russia is among the countries that have stood by the Iranian nation during difficult times,” he said during the concluding press conference in which he declined to confirm that in February Russia had supplied Iran with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. In return, Teheran had supplied Moscow with hundreds of one-way attack drones which Russia is currently using to strike Ukraine. Shoigu emphasised that Russia condemned the murder of Haniyeh, which Moscow considered a “clear example of the violation of all international laws and regulations”, but called on all parties to refrain from steps that could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war. He urged Iran not to fall into Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trap of igniting such a war which would directly involve the US and could even suck in Moscow.
Overriding all this is the war in Gaza. Most stakeholders are now convinced that the only way to avoid a regional escalation is through a ceasefire in the Strip and a hostage swap deal. So far, negotiations have faltered over the duration of any ceasefire, with Hamas wanting a long-term end to hostilities and the removal of all Israeli troops from Gaza, while Netanyahu insists that a ceasefire must be temporary, so that Israel can return to its mission of destroying Hamas. Many observers believe that any agreement is out of reach, although US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar remain hopeful that Hamas and Israel will accept a “bridging proposal” which aims to narrow the gaps between the two sides in the 10-month-old war. The plan would involve an initial six-week ceasefire during which a limited number of female, elderly and sick Israeli hostages would be freed in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails. It would be indefinitely extendible while negotiations settled the second stage, in which soldiers and bodies would be returned, Israeli troops would begin to withdraw from Gaza and displaced Palestinian civilians would be allowed to return to their homes, or what remains of them, in the north of the Strip.
A major sticking point is Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli troops should remain in the Philadelphi corridor, a strategic strip on the Gaza-Egypt border, in order to prevent Hamas from receiving any re-supplies of weapons. He also wants to retain troops on the Netzarim east-west corridor across the middle of Gaza, which effectively cuts the Strip in two, north and south. Neither is acceptable to Hamas, as Netanyahu well knows, and is a sticking point in the talks currently underway in Cairo, mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar.
Netanyahu’s unwillingness to compromise leads many to conclude that he doesn’t want any ceasefire, temporary or permanent, wishing instead to continue the war in order to preserve power, with the support of his two ultra-right partners in the Knesset. These two Zionist ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalei Smotrich, have repeatedly made it clear that their aim is to create a greater Israel devoid of any Palestinians, who will have been forcibly transported from Gaza into Egypt and from the West Bank into Jordan. Benjamin Netanyahu is their puppet and they are pulling his strings.
Which takes us back to the assassination of the moderate Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was key to achieving peace in the region. There is deep scepticism and fatigue among many in Israel about Netanyahu’s commitment to securing such an agreement. “As long as the entire group of professional negotiators believes that Netanyahu is scuttling a deal, there won’t be any confidence”, wrote Nadav Eyal, an Israeli opinion writer for “Yedioth Ahronoth”, one of Israel’s most respected daily newspapers. Most of Israeli moderates agree, arguing that Netanyahu is only interested in his political survival.
The influential US political website, The Hill, put it succinctly last Wednesday: “Netanyahu is threatening regional war to save his career.” Arguing that the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza would derail Netanyahu’s political career, The Hill reminds its readers that “Netanyahu, like Donald Trump in the US, faces criminal proceedings domestically, in his case for corruption. When Netanyahu is out of office, he can be tried convicted and imprisoned, giving him a vested personal interest in remaining as prime minister for as long as possible.”
Could this be why Netanyahu provoked Iran with the assassination of Haniyeh in, of all places, Teheran, in the hope of prolonging the current crisis and even an escalation to regional war in order to save himself? If so, he must find the delay by Iran and Hezbollah agonising!
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.