While Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran’s capital Tehran mere hours after the swearing-in ceremony of President Masoud Pezeshkian has created shockwaves across the world, the response to the killing is expected to be imminent, and, possibly, tectonic.

Haniyeh was, after all, the political chief of a group labelled a terror entity by the US and many others. In fact, some had designated the group so long before they listed Al Qaeda in the same bracket. The likes of Al Qaeda saw a more rapid ascent in using violence globally, culminating with the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, which also launched a two-decade-long ‘war on terror’. The likes of Hamas, on the other hand, confined themselves around the issue of both the sovereignty of Palestine and a fundamental ideological aversion to the state of Israel.

‘Axis of Resistance’ At Iranian President’s Swearing-In Ceremony

The killing of Haniyeh is shocking but not unexpected. In November 2023, a month after Hamas orchestrated the terror attack against Israel – from which the group continues to hold hostages – the Israeli establishment had made it clear that it would go after the leadership of the likes of Hamas in Gaza, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and others. Back then, the Yemen-based Ansrallah (more popularly known as the Houthis) was not as big an actor as it has today become, specifically in the Red Sea theatre. At Pezeshkian’s swearing-in, the leadership of all these groups, known more formally as the ‘Axis of Resistance’, were in attendance.

Watch | What Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh Did Hours Before His Assassination

The fact that Haniyeh was killed in the middle of Tehran at a time when it was teeming with military personnel sends out a strong message of both access to and the compromise of Iranian security and polity infrastructure. This further underscored the fact that a narrative was built to showcase where groups like Hamas gain their strength from (although this has not been an area of question or contention). While Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack, Iran blames the Jewish state for the same. However, Israel has, in the meantime, taken responsibility for the killing of top Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur in a strike on the Lebanese capital of Beirut, and the elimination of Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in Gaza, known to be a key architect of the October 7 terror strike.

What Next?

The big question at this juncture is, what next? In April, Iran retaliated against Israel after the latter targeted what Tehran claimed was part of its diplomatic mission in Damascus, Syria. This event set forth an escalation ladder where Iran could not be seen as being unable or incapable of directly responding militarily and not just via its knitting of proxy groups spread across the region. While Tehran for long has sought to create a level of strategic ambiguity, where attacks by proxy groups that receive material and political support from the country’s all-powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite clandestine foreign wing, the Quds Force, gave it a level of deniability, Haniyeh’s assassination may in part be designed to reverse this blueprint and pull Iran out of its own shadows, into a more direct, visible, and public confrontation.

Also Read | Iran’s Leader Orders Attack On Israel After Hamas Chief’s Killing: Report

Even if Iran would for the moment want to hold back, the rhetoric and expectation from its Axis partners may not allow it to do so. If by way of argument, Israel is goading a response from Tehran, a speech given by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday found itself in the same space as Israel, looking for an active response from the Iranian side. “Do those people think they can kill a commander like Ismail Haniyeh and Iran will remain silent?” Nasrallah said as he laid out a requirement for avenging Haniyeh’s death. For long, the Iran-backed Axis has fought for its own ideological and political aims that feed into a larger construct, in way of providing manpower and geography alike. During this, they have also absorbed tremendous loss. This is especially true for the Hamas in Gaza. It may become hard for Iran now to exercise strategic restraint, even though the likes of Hezbollah may well do so themselves in the long term, despite the rhetoric.

Some Forced To Find A Middle Path

For others in the region, specifically in the Arab Gulf, the current trajectory of escalation remains worrying. Many top Arab representatives, including from the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, were present at Pezeshkian’s inauguration. The likes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the recent past have increased their engagement with Iran in a bid to course-correct the long-standing narrative of Shia-Sunni confrontations. While sectarian issues remain mostly entrenched, geopolitical and geoeconomic realities have forced those like Saudi Arabia, for example, to find a middle path with the Houthis in Yemen via dialogue, a group with which they technically have been at war since 2015.

For Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and so on, reconstructing this crisis first as one between Israel and Iran, and then, as a longer and larger battle for Palestinian self-determination, may well be crucial to secure their own neutrality.

Region Remains Sensitive

The US, a core security player in the region, has been relatively silent since Haniyeh’s death. US President Joe Biden has said that Haniyeh’s killing will not help the ceasefire and a negotiated deal with Hamas over the release of Israeli hostages. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, himself facing severe political headwinds, seems to have chosen the popular demand to eliminate figureheads such as Haniyeh at a time when, even if a deal was brokered, he would have had to release in exchange hundreds of Hamas members who are currently being held in Israeli prisons.

Finally, regional tensions are expected to remain significantly high in the days to come as Iran and its proxies decide upon a response. In April, there were hints that the escalation between Iran and Israel was at some level mitigated and managed, perhaps via indirect communication or some kind of mediation. This time, the region may well not be so lucky unless a regional and global effort to calm the situation down is mobilised immediately.

[Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation. He is the author of ‘The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and its Shadow on South Asia’ (Penguin Viking, 2019)]

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Hezbollah’s leader warned on August 1 that the conflict with Israel has entered a “new phase,” as he addressed mourners at the funeral of a commander from the group who was killed by an Israeli airstrike this week in Beirut.

Meanwhile in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader prayed over the body of Hamas’ political leader, who was killed in a presumed Israeli assassination.

The back-to-back killings have increased fears of an escalation into a wider war, leaving the region waiting to see how Iran and ally Hezbollah will respond. Iran has vowed retaliation against Israel for the strike that killed Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for Haniyeh’s assassination, but comments by Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stopped short of an outright denial.

“There was no additional airstrike, not a missile and not an Israeli drone, in the entire Middle East that night,” he said on August 1, fueling speculation that Israel could have used other means to kill Haniyeh.

Israel did confirm it carried out the strike on July 30 in Beirut that killed Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur, along with an Iranian military adviser and at least five civilians. Israel said Shukur was behind a rocket attack days earlier that hit a soccer field in the Israeli-held Golan Heights, killing 12 children. Hezbollah denied being behind that strike, a denial that Nasrallah reiterated.

In a speech via video link to mourners gathered with Shukur’s coffin at an auditorium in a Beirut suburb, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said, “We … have entered a new phase that is different from the previous period.”

“Do they expect that Hajj Ismail Haniyeh will be killed in Iran and Iran will remain silent?” he said of the Israelis. Addressing Israelis who celebrated the two killings, he said, “Laugh a bit and you will cry a lot.”

But as he often does, Nasrallah kept his comments vague, vowing a “very well-studied retaliation” without saying what form it would take. He said only that Israel “will have to wait for the anger of the region’s honorable people.”

“The enemy and the one who is behind the enemy” — an apparent reference to Israel’s chief ally, the United States — “will have to wait for our coming response,” he said.

International officials have been scrambling to avert a cycle of retaliation before it spirals into a greater war. Since the Gaza war began in October, Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire almost daily across the border in exchanges that have caused deaths and the evacuation of tens of thousands from their homes. But they have also stayed within limits.

Several times, strikes that appeared to cross red lines raised fears of an acceleration into full-fledged war, but outside diplomacy reined in the two sides. Hezbollah faces strong pressure not to draw Lebanon into a repeat of the militant group’s 2006 war with Israel, which wreaked heavy death and destruction in the country.

Israel and Iran risked plunging into war earlier this year when Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April. Iran retaliated, and Israel countered in an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle before it spun out of control.

In Beirut’s southern suburbs, the biggest Shiite district in the capital, hundreds of black-clad mourners packed the auditorium, many of them holding Hezbollah flags or photos of Shukur. An escort of red-capped fighters carried Shukur’s coffin, also draped in a Hezbollah flag, down the aisle to the backing of a military band.

In his speech, Nasrallah praised Shukur as a veteran commander and denied that Hezbollah carried out the deadly strike on the soccer field in the mainly Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan.

“We have the courage to take responsibility for where we strike, even if it’s a mistake. If we made a mistake, we would admit and apologize,” he said, adding, “The enemy made itself the judge, jury, and executioner without any evidence.”

An unusual relative calm prevailed on August 1 on the Lebanon-Israel border. Hezbollah claimed no rocket launches into Israel during the day. The Lebanese state news agency said a strike hit the house of a Syrian family in a southern Lebanese town, killing at least four people and wounding several others. Afterwards, Hezbollah announced it had launched a barrage of rockets into Israel in retaliation.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s fighters would return to regular military operations Friday, ending the period of mourning for Shukur, but that the renewed strikes would be unrelated to the retaliation for his killing.

Earlier on August 1 in Tehran, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over Haniyeh’s coffin in a ceremony at Tehran University, with the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, next to him. State television later showed the coffin placed in a truck and moved on the street toward Azadi Square in Tehran and people throwing flowers at it.

Haniyeh’s remains are to be transferred to Qatar for burial on August 2.

Haniyeh came to Tehran to attend the inauguration of Pezeshkian. Associated Press photos showed the Hamas leader seated alongside leaders from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group and Hezbollah, and Iranian media showed him and Pezeshkian hugging. Haniyeh had met earlier with Khamenei.

Hours later, he was killed in a strike that hit a residence Haniyeh uses in Tehran. Iranian authorities said the attack is under investigation but haven’t provided details.

Israel had pledged to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. On Thursday, Israel said it had confirmed that the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, was killed in a July 13 airstrike in Gaza. Hamas, which earlier said Deif survived the blast, did not immediately comment.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “all parties” in the Middle East must avoid escalatory actions that could plunge the region into further conflict.

Speaking on August 1 in the Mongolian capital of Ulaaanbataar, Mr. Blinken appealed for countries to “make the right choices in the days ahead” and said a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was the only way to begin to break the current cycle of violence and suffering. Blinken did not mention Israel, Iran or Hamas by name in his comments.