We’re starting to get some concept of how Ismail Haniyeh was killed. Early indications counsel that he and his bodyguards died when a rocket hit the home the place he was staying in Tehran.
All eyes will inevitably fall on Israel, which vowed to seek out and punish all Hamas leaders following the brutal assaults of seven October, during which round 1,200 Israelis and foreigners had been killed.
Israel usually doesn’t touch upon its operations overseas, however this assault could have adopted the identical sample as an Israeli operation which focused Iranian air defences round its nuclear facility in Natanz on 19 April.
Israeli jets are believed to have fired rockets from outdoors Iranian airspace.
However whereas particulars of the assault slowly emerge, its political penalties are additionally coming into focus.
The obvious is the possible injury to fragile efforts to barter a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ismail Haniyeh could not have been in command of day-to-day occasions on the bottom in Gaza – that’s the area of the army commander Yahya Sinwar – however because the Hamas chief in exile he was a crucial interlocutor in negotiations brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt.
American officers had just lately steered that ceasefire negotiations may quickly succeed, though a gathering in Rome final weekend didn’t end in a breakthrough.
However this can be very onerous to see how any progress could be made within the quick wake of the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.
All of which begs the query: If this was, as everybody assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out?
Past the will to actual revenge on anybody related to Hamas, what was Israel hoping to attain?
Turkey’s overseas ministry has already summed up the possible response of many within the area.
“It has been revealed as soon as once more that the federal government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has no intention of attaining peace,” it stated in a press release.
The timing suggests this was a wider a part of Israel’s threatened retaliation for the Hezbollah rocket assault that killed 12 Druze youngsters and younger individuals within the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday – retaliation that included the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut final night time.
Israel had warned that its response can be harsh.
Officers right here commonly level out that Iran is the nexus for the so-called “arc of resistance” within the Center East, which incorporates Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the West Financial institution, and the Houthis in Yemen.
After dealing a blow to Hezbollah in Beirut (and just lately to the Houthis in Hodeidah), killing the Hamas chief in Iran sends an emphatic, chilling message, to the militant teams and their Iranian backers: Israel can and can come after you, wherever you’re.
