Only hours after a pair of suspected Israeli airstrikes killed top Hamas and Hezbollah officials, a defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday vowed he would do whatever it takes to protect Israeli citizens and secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas since the Oct. 7 attack.
Mr. Netanyahu addressed the nation following a strike that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. The Qatar-based Hamas leader, a key figure in U.S.-backed cease-fire talks aimed at ending the war with Israel in Gaza, was in Iran to mark President Mashoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration earlier this week.
The prime minister did not officially acknowledge that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was behind the Tehran attack, but the targeted sorties that hit Beirut and Tehran sparked a furious reaction from across the Arab world and produced calls for a general strike by Palestinians.
“Those who massacre our children, those who murder our citizens, those who put our country in harm’s way, they will have to pay,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We will be determined against any threat. Israel will make anyone who is against us pay a very heavy price.”
There was equally menacing rhetoric coming from Hamas: The group’s military wing said in a statement that Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination “takes the battle to new dimensions and will have major repercussions on the entire region.”
It was not immediately clear what Mr. Haniyeh’s death meant for ongoing cease-fire talks. The Biden administration, led by CIA Director William J. Burns, had been engaged in an intense round of multilateral negotiations in recent weeks. He claimed that Israel and Hamas appeared to be inching close to a deal to pause the fighting and release some of Hamas’ Israeli and foreign hostages.
As the political face of Hamas, Mr. Haniyeh, 62, was long considered to have been a priority target for the IDF since the Oct. 7 attack.
“Back in the first early days of the war, I said that it would take a long time and it would require all of us to be patient,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
While he didn’t confirm Israel’s role in the death of Mr. Haniyeh, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged that the IDF on Tuesday killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Fouad Shukr, in an airstrike in southern Beirut, Lebanon. The killing was in retaliation for the deaths of 12 children in a July 27 strike on the Israeli Druze village in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights.
“He was also in charge of many attacks against Israeli citizens over the last nine months. He was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was the country’s duty to avenge Mr. Haniyeh’s death because the strike took place on Iranian soil.
“The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime martyred our beloved guest inside our house and made us mournful. But, it paved the way for a harsh punishment to be imposed on it,” Mr. Khamenei said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Security Council meets
The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss the strikes, The Associated Press reported, but it appeared unlikely that the council would be able to come to a consensus. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the strikes as “dangerous escalation.” His spokesman told reporters, “Restraint alone is insufficient at this extremely sensitive time.”
The killings of the Hezbollah and Hamas leaders are fueling fears that the Israeli-Palestinian fighting could spiral into a much broader war, pitting Israel against Iran and its allies. Top Biden administration officials tried to make the argument that the killings only underscored the need for all sides to return to the bargaining table.
“It’s too soon to know what any of these reported events could mean for the cease-fire deal,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to stop working on it. We have a team in the region right now as we speak to try to continue to work with our counterparts to move this forward because it’s that important.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who engaged in a round of calls with counterparts from regional countries throughout the day, told reporters Wednesday on a trip through Asia that the U.S. government had no knowledge of Israeli plans to take out Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran. “This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” he told Channel News Asia in an interview.
Qatar, a key player in the U.S.-backed negotiations seeking a cease-fire in Gaza, condemned the Haniyeh killings.
“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 for the other side?” Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on X. “Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.”
Egyptian officials said the attacks in Beirut and Tehran indicated that Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Israeli government was no longer interested in a peace deal to settle the fighting in Gaza. The governments of Russia and Turkey also denounced the killing of the Hamas official.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard warned Israel will face a “harsh and painful response” from Iran and its many allies around the region, the AP reported. The Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy was holding an emergency meeting on the strike later Wednesday.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have long been considered rivals for power in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh a “cowardly act and a dangerous development.”
Palestinian Authority officials issued calls Wednesday for strikes to protest the killing.
Mr. Haniyeh joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987. The military commander of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, remains at large and is the subject of an intense Israeli search inside the Palestinian enclave.
For his part, Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday did not sound ready to back down in the face of growing international pressure over Israel’s policies.
“For months, not a week has gone by without people, at home and abroad, telling me to end the war,” he said in a televised address Wednesday evening. “I didn’t give in to those voices then and I won’t give in to them today.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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