Iran's options for revenge: is war among them?An-Nahar, Lebanon, August 1
Israel has unmistakably crossed red lines in its confrontation with the Resistance Front by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the Hamas movement. Haniyeh was in Tehran to participate in the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. While previous operations, like the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a leader of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, in Beirut had not yet tested Iran’s boundaries, Israel’s latest actions mark a more severe provocation.
Hezbollah issued a statement just two hours after the deadly attack. This communiqué included a request from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to Sheikh Naim Qassem and Hassan Fadlallah, of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, urging the resistance to maintain its “wise path,” especially since the onset of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Had Israel only assassinated Shukr in Lebanon, it could have been interpreted as an act of retribution for the victims of the missile strike on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights – a retaliation Israel could manage.
However, the subsequent assassination of Haniyeh at his Tehran residence during the inauguration ceremony, following the provocative death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter incident near the Azerbaijani border, shifts the context from revenge to outright provocation. This remains true even if Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders were already on Israel’s target list for their role in the Oct. 7 attack. Globally, the narrative now inescapably ties Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran to Israel’s implicit desire for a broader conflict. Observers from the Far East to the Western world see this act as a clarion call for war.
The backdrop to this situation includes an array of internal, regional, and international factors: Israelis are currently more focused on internal discord than external threats and might need a return to a “circle of fear.” The resistance front shows signs of weakening. READ MORE
