What the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh means for the war in Gaza

Hamas will not be deterred or diminished after the killing of one of its most senior leaders, analysts and experts told POLITICO.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas and who was leading cease-fire negotiations on the part of the militant group, was assassinated in Tehran Wednesday morning just hours after Israel targeted a top Hezbollah military leader in Beirut.

Both Iran and Hamas have pointed the finger at Israel, which has conducted many high-profile assassinations over the years on Iranian soil and targeted Hamas’ leaders in Gaza. Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s assassination.

Iran has vowed a “harsh and painful response” in retaliation, leading some to worry a broader regional war could be possible, adding that the United States and other Western countries won’t be immune to the fallout.

Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, and Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, explain what could come next after the killing of the key Palestinian leader who joined Hamas in the 1980s before rising through its ranks.

Their comments have been edited for clarity.

Who is Ismail Haniyeh?

Haniyeh, one of Hamas’ senior leaders, was in Iran for the inauguration of its new president. The political leader of the militant group, he had been living in exile in Qatar. On the global stage, he was the face of Hamas, tasked with leading cease-fire negotiations in recent months. He was once the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority for a brief period.

He joined Hamas in the 1980s during the first intifada and took over the top position in 2017. In May, the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office requested arrest warrants for Haniyeh alongside two other Hamas leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes related to Oct. 7, when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people on Israeli soil and took around 250 hostages. In the months since, through airstrikes and a ground offensive, Israel has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and spread a humanitarian crisis through Gaza, experts and aid groups say.

Regional leaders and Arab diplomats typically view Haniyeh as a moderate within the group.

How did Haniyeh operate within Hamas?

Tahani Mustafa: He was a moderate within the movement. He was a centrist. He was someone who was able to unify a lot of the different strands within the movement itself, maintaining some level of cohesion, which I think has been unprecedented in a lot of other Palestinian factions so far, especially in light of Oct. 7.

Where does this leave Hamas?

Tahani Mustafa: Often, Western commentators and Israel themselves tend to sort of misconstrue factions like Hamas, where the movement is not dependent on particular individuals. This isn’t something that is going to have the effect of derailing the movement by any means. It’s not going to be a massive blow to the movement in terms of its military or political positional capabilities. I think, if anything, this is going to probably push the movement into a more hardline corner.

What does this mean for cease-fire negotiations

This is not the first time Israel has targeted a moderate and someone it was negotiating with, Tahani Mustafa said.

Tahani Mustafa: The last one, I think, was Ahmad Jabari [Hamas’ then-military commander] in 2012 where they assassinated him on the cusp of what was a comprehensive agreement for a permanent cessation of hostilities, and they had assassinated him while he had the negotiating papers in his car.

Regional leaders and Arab diplomats typically view Haniyeh as a moderate within the group. | AFP via Getty Images

[Editor’s note: At the time, Israel posted on X, then known as Twitter, Jabari had been “eliminated.” Then-Israeli President Shimon Peres said to U.S. President Barack Obama: “The head of the military force of Hamas was killed half an hour ago. He was a most extreme man and was in charge of all the attacks and assassinations from Gaza against Israel. We shall handle it with great care.”]

Tahani Mustafa: If anything, if we are to see any kind of serious negotiations coming to the fore, Israel is going to have to make some serious concessions. It would be political suicide at this point for any entity that has experienced the blow that Hamas has today to simply just cede over the demands of one side.

Even Israeli press reported a month ago that Netanyahu had effectively derailed nine cease-fire proposals through various mechanisms, including leaking sensitive information to his war Cabinet. This just kind of goes in the long line of Israel attempting to derail cease-fire talks. But if you want to put it on the other hand, this could be the thing that can get Netanyahu the cease-fire, also saving face in front of his own public.

It kind of really miscalculates the position of your adversary, which is that, if anything, now, Israel is going to be in a harder position in negotiations, because Hamas is not going to be able to accept anything short of the concessions that it is now asking for.

What should we be watching for next in the region?

Tahani Mustafa: Nobody wants war. Tehran has made that very clear in the last nine months. The same with Hezbollah and Lebanon, understanding that Lebanon itself is not in any position to bear the consequences of any kind of full-out war with Israel, simply because Israel tends to target civilian infrastructure. You know, that is the systematic thing that it does. It did in 2006. So that’s not something that’s lost on Hezbollah, which has been the main deterrent for Hezbollah.

However, continued Israeli provocations, I think, could end up driving the region into a war. The question is, just what is going to end up being the tipping point? It’s difficult to say if this will be it. But if Israel continues down the line, if there are no red lines put on Israel, if there is nothing holding Israel back, then Israel will continue to do what it thinks it can get away with.

Vali Nasr: In one swoop, killing Haniyeh at this point in time, pretty much kills talk of a cease-fire with Hamas, which was ongoing. It adds to the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, and Israel and Iran, and it looks to the region as if Israel is deliberately looking for a broader conflict.

Why would Israel want to carry out an attack on a top Hamas leader in Iran?

Vali Nasr: Israel had said from Oct. 8 onwards that it would target and eliminate all of Hamas’ leadership. And it could have done. It could have killed Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, where he lived, or in Turkey, or in other Arab countries where he visited, but they chose to do it in Tehran, and they chose to do it the day after the inauguration of a new Iranian president.

It was not only an assassination but a provocation for a wider conflict with Iran. This is the way perhaps Iranians understood it, that it was designed to humiliate Iran. It was really an attack on a state, on a very important state event inside Iran.

Haniyeh was in Iran on a diplomatic visa, diplomatic passport for a state as a guest for a very important state event, and to kill him there, essentially, is attacking that presidential inauguration.

What does this mean for Iran-U.S. relations?

Vali Nasr: There’s a new Iranian president who campaigned on talking to the United States and finding a pathway that would relieve economic sanctions on Iran, which means having to come to some sort of agreement on the nuclear issue with the West. And then at his inauguration you have this assassination, it almost looks like it would make him moving forward easily with the United States and the West much more difficult. If you were to say that this attack was to muddy the waters between Iran and the United States, or at least the consequence of it would be that it’s difficult for them to move forward once [Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian] is in office.

If the U.S. is still not able to control Israeli policies, condones them and is seen as essentially completely supportive of Israel, that does not provide the right political climate for this new Iranian president who made engagement with the U.S. a central piece of his presidential campaign.

Iran has vowed a “harsh and painful response” in retaliation, leading some to worry a broader regional war could is possible. | Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

[Editor’s note: In an interview with Channel News Asia Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “First, this is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very hard to speculate, and I’ve learned over many years never to speculate on the impact one event may have on something else. So I can’t tell you what this means.”]

Will Iran retaliate?

Vali Nasr: Ironically, the West is, right now, hoping for Hezbollah and Iran to show restraint and not act in a way that would take this conflict to the next step. So I’m sure there is a lot of back-channel diplomacy going on as we’re speaking but essentially, we’re in a situation much like after the month of April, when Israel first attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Then Iran attacked Israel, and for two weeks, the world held its breath.

This attack puts the onus on Iran and Hezbollah to retaliate. And it’s very difficult for Iran not to retaliate at all, because this is such an overt act in its capital on the occasion of the inauguration of a new president, that I find it very difficult that the Iranians can just brush it off. So the question is, when do they react? How do they react? And then, how does the United States manage the situation again?

I think [Iran and Hezbollah], along with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt [and Qatar], also want a cease-fire. So although they have broad disagreements among them in general contours, they all want a cease-fire and they don’t want a broader war. I think the only country right now which doesn’t want to end the war in Gaza, and also is playing with fire in the region, is Israel. And nobody has influence on Israel other than the United States.

If the United States is either unwilling or unable to influence Israeli decision-making at this point, then essentially we could be in a very dangerous spot, because we will be wholly reliant on Iran and Hezbollah basically not to retaliate. Because if they do, then you know, this can be a very rapid escalatory cycle into a much larger war.

What do you think the U.S. will do next?

Tahani Mustafa: Since the outset of this the U.S. has not drawn red lines, and in instances where it has tried to put some kind of goalpost, those goalposts constantly shifted. As long as the U.S. allows Israel to get away with whatever it can, Israel will continue to do so. So, you know, this has been a pretty solid indicator of just that. I can’t really speak to the rationale behind the U.S. administration but it is very clear that something like this is still not enough to try and restrain Israel.

Vali Nasr: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have been hoping for a cease-fire that would end the [Israel-Hamas war in Gaza]. They’ve been hoping that there would be no escalation into a broader conflict that hurts their interests. And that’s exactly the direction things are going. And when they look at Washington, they see that either Washington is no longer able to restrain Israel, or that Washington didn’t know at all, or that Washington actually gave Israel the green light. And all of these scenarios are not good for the United States. Allies in the region rely on the United States to maintain control and to be a force for stability. So the impression that Israel basically can go around the United States to escalate in the region is not a source of calm.

Now what?

Vali Nasr: The Palestinian issue has survived even despite decades of elimination of its leaders and I don’t think this is actually a solution to the larger problem. We need to get to a cease-fire. There has to be a political settlement to the Palestinian issue, and then, you know, you can address the larger issues in the region around Hezbollah, Iran, etc, one step at a time. The path we’re on right now suggests the solutions are going to come through war and I don’t think that is going to be productive for the region. If we end up in war, it’s going to be bloody, it’s going to be costly, and the West is not going to be immune from the consequences.