Avenging the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, is now Tehran’s duty as his killing occurred while he was a “dear guest” on Iranian soil, the country’s supreme leader has warned in his first reaction to the killing.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Haniyeh’s killing, which Tehran views as a provocation designed to escalate the conflict in the Middle East, as a “bitter and difficult incident that happened in the territory of the Islamic republic”.
The episode has plunged Masoud Pezeshkhian, the newly inaugurated Iranian president, into a major crisis in his first days in office as he faces internal demands to respond to what amounts to a humiliating targeting of an ally while visiting Tehran to attend his own inauguration – even as he seeks better ties with the west. Pezeshkhian vowed his country would “defend its territory” and make the attackers regret their action.
Mohammad Reza Aref, the newly appointed vice-president, said the west was complicit in the manifestation of “state terrorism” through its silence at the actions of Israel, whom Tehran and Hamas have blamed for the assassination.
He said: “This desperate act was based on sinister goals, including creating a new crisis at the regional level and challenging the regional and international relations of the Islamic Republic of Iran at this point in time, especially at the beginning of the ‘government of national unity’.”
The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said: “This crime of the Zionist regime will face a harsh and painful response from the powerful and huge resistance front.”
The choice of Tehran, as opposed to Qatar, where Haniyeh mainly resides, or Turkey which he regularly visited, is likely to be about more than just opportunity. It is also a chance to show to a global audience that the IRGC cannot defend its most prized political assets, even in its own capital.
Worse still, is the fact that Haniyeh was in Tehran with 110 other foreign delegations, including leaders of the supposed “axis of resistance”, to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration, underlining to others how little protection the IRGC can, in practice, provide to its dearest diplomatic allies.
Pezeshkian, who is in the midst of forming a reformist cabinet, was elected partly on a strategy of building better relations with the west, as a way of boosting the ailing Iranian economy and lifting economic sanctions, but that already internally controversial strategy now looks harder to follow.
The 85-year-old Khamenei had displayed his scepticism about the strategy on Sunday, when he said he would only support better relations with Europe if the continent first changed its attitude towards Tehran. Iran’s future, he stressed, lay with China and Russia, the policy adopted by Pezeshkian’s opponents in the election campaign.
The non-attendance of any Europeans at the inauguration apart from Enrique Mora, the deputy to the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, and the EU chief nuclear negotiator showed how relations with Europe have fallen away. Reformist newspapers noted the absence of European leaders, or even ambassadors, at the ceremony.
It is striking by contrast that at the time of the election of the last reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, in May 1997, the then Israeli foreign minister, David Levy, suggested a momentous transition was taking place that needed to be followed closely.
This time Emmanuel Macron, the French president, spent an hour on the phone with Pezeshkian on Monday, testing the waters to see if his surprise election might mark an opening for better relations. But if there was any chance of a diplomatic breakthrough – and there was no sign of one judging from the read-outs of the call issued by both sides – the opportunity will have slipped away for now. Macron had been probing to see if Iran would stop sending arms to Moscow for use in Ukraine, an issue of muffled debate inside Tehran.
It is also easy to exaggerate, partly based on the Khatami experience, both the president’s powers in security issues and the extent to which Pezeshkian marked a break with the past. After voting in the first round of the presidential election, the reformist candidate himself told reporters he hoped his country would try to have friendly relations “with all countries except for Israel”.
Pezeshkian has also mocked the west’s support for human rights and its refusal to stop the 35,000 deaths in Gaza.
One of his first acts on 8 July after his election was to send a personal letter of reassurance to the Hezbollah secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has always supported the resistance of the people in the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime,” Pezeshkian wrote. “Supporting the resistance is rooted in the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will continue with strength.”
Hezbollah, reeling from the killing of Fuad Shukr, a top military commander in the group’s stronghold of southern Beirut, will now want to know how deep that support is in practice.
A meeting of the Iranian National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian parliament will be held later on Wednesday, but already Iranian leaders are describing Haniyeh’s death as the crossing of a red line, meaning some form of military response is inevitable.
Inside Iran there is no sense that Haniyeh was a legitimate target as the leader of a movement that mounted the attack on Israel on 7 October.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, said the killing of Haniyeh would strengthen the unbreakable bond between Iran and Palestine.
Indeed such is the humiliation for the IRGC that voices inside Tehran are reopening questions as to whether the former president Ebrahim Raisi, killed in a helicopter accident, was truly the victim of engine failure or instead something more sinister. The revival of the rumours also underlines how official commentary on security events are disbelieved.
The last time Israel and Iran took direct military action against one another was over the killing on 1 April of eight IRGC al-Quds force commanders in the Iranian consulate in Damascus, including Brig Gen Mohammad Zahedi, the al-Quds force’s commander for Syria and Lebanon. Iran responded with a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones on 13 April, the first direct attack ever launched against Israel from Iranian soil. Then on 19 April, Israel destroyed part of an Iranian S-300 long-range air defence system in Isfahan.
The two sides walked across a choreographed tightrope, warning one another through intermediaries of the likely scale and limits of their reprisals. Israel said it could have gone further such as hitting Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility and its broader air defence system. Both sides signalled they were not seeking war with one another.
But since then other assassinations have taken place; Iran believes Israel’s right-wing leadership is blocking a Gaza ceasefire agreement; and the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon has been steadily headed to the brink.
Iranian diplomats say the crisis presents severe problems for the west in that, by defending Israel’s security, it has muted itself in the face of an Israeli prime minister who uses methods widely regarded as counter-productive.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, who has acted as a mediator in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, vented his frustration on X, writing: “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side? Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.”
Coincidentally, both the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the defence secretary, John Healey, are currently in Qatar. In parliament on Tuesday, Lammy said: “If we get that immediate ceasefire, if the Biden plan is adopted, it will allow de-escalation across the region. That is why we need to see that plan adopted by both sides as soon as possible.”
Although he blamed Iran for the overall escalation of tensions in the region, he will have to ask himself if the killing of Haniyeh at this point in Tehran brings the Biden plan or instead chaos closer.
