Two enemies of Israel are killed, and Mideast tilts on the brink of wider war
Summary
Strikes on Hezbollah in Beirut and Hamas in Tehran have added new risks as diplomats try to head off an escalation.Iran had planned to use this week’s inauguration of its new president to show off its powerful collection of militias. Representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah all gathered in Tehran, where Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh hugged new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian amid chants of “Death to Israel."
But before the next day dawned, it was Haniyeh who was dead, in a mysterious strike in the Iranian capital that Hamas blamed on Israel. It came just hours after the Israeli military said it had killed a top Hezbollah official with an airstrike in Beirut.
The pair of provocative killings dealt an embarrassing blow to Iran and its self-proclaimed Axis of Resistance. They also have pushed the Middle East to the brink of a wider war that the U.S. has worked tirelessly for months to head off.
“We are on the verge of a large, large-scale escalation," said Danny Citrinowicz, who served as head of the Iran branch for Israeli military intelligence and is now a fellow with the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “Iran is leading the axis, and they cannot protect one of the leaders of the axis coming for Pezeshkian’s inauguration."
The week opened with global diplomats led by the U.S. scrambling to prevent a rocket strike that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from spiraling into a broader war. With Israel under pressure to retaliate forcefully, their efforts were focused on how to find a target that would be important but not so provocative as to force a heavy response, negotiators involved in the process said.
Hezbollah signaled repeatedly that hitting Beirut or a senior official would cross red lines, the negotiators said. When Israel crossed both, U.S. and Arab diplomats involved in efforts to defuse tensions were concerned the violence could escalate.
The strike on Tehran, Hezbollah’s main backer, adds a dangerous new variable to the calculation. Israel hasn’t commented on Haniyeh’s killing.
The Middle East has teetered on the edge of a regional war since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that left 1,200 people dead and sparked the conflict in Gaza, now in its 10th month. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel the following day, and the two sides have exchanged fire on a near-daily basis since then.
An Israeli strike on Iranian military leaders gathered at a diplomatic building in Damascus in April provoked a massive response by Iran, which fired more than 300 missiles and drones in a rare direct attack on Israeli soil. A coalition led by the U.S. helped Israel fight off that attack, and a limited assault on Iran by Israel ended the exchange and left a wary stasis.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen have fired drones and missiles at Israel, including a drone launched by the Yemen-based Houthi militia that hit Tel Aviv, prompting Israel to bomb a Houthi-controlled Yemeni port.
U.S. diplomats have crisscrossed the region in an effort to keep the various strikes and retaliations from escalating.
Whether the killings this week will tip the balance is unclear. Israel is now bracing for responses both on its own territory and on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad, said former Israeli National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror. Iran in the past has targeted Israelis abroad and Hezbollah has targeted Jewish institutions internationally.
Iran may “try to find a weak point in the broader Israeli system, in Israel or abroad, and to use it against Israel," Amidror said.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com
