Israeli officials declined to comment on the death of Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief in exile who was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of the newly elected Iranian president. Details of the killing remained unclear.
The killing came hours after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut targeted a senior leader of Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed militant group locked in combat with Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said Fuad Shukr was killed in the Tuesday evening attack, blaming him for the weekend rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12. Hezbollah has acknowledged his presence in the demolished building but said recovery efforts were continuing.
The deadly events marked the end of two key leaders of Tehran’s proxy militant groups in the region. Reports in Arabic media said that a third, Ziad al-Nakhaleh, the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was in the building where Haniyeh was killed.
Security analysts said the events would push the region closer to a regionwide conflict, with Iran compelled to respond to an attack in the heart of its capital. The events come just months after Iran and Israel exchanged missile and rocket attacks in a confrontation that experts warned was flirting with all-out war.
Israeli experts said Israel hoped the risk of escalation would be outweighed by a demonstration of military and intelligence prowess that allowed it to reach deep into the Iranian capital.
“I don’t think it will change the balance of power or the face of the war, but it sends a strong signal to Iran and the axis [of proxy militant groups],” said Yoel Guzansky, a former official on Israel’s National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “It shows them they cannot be safe anywhere, even in Tehran.”
“I think this is Israel getting some of its reputation for deterrence back,” he said.
The Israeli military, without commenting on the Tehran attack, said it was not implementing precautionary measures across the country Wednesday, telling citizens there were “no changes in the Home Front Command defensive guidelines.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled a midday meeting with commanders at the country’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Haniyeh’s killing was met with immediate condemnation and outrage across the Arab and Muslim world, with Iran threatening to retaliate.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the killing would “strengthen the deep and unbreakable bond between the Islamic Republic of Iran and dear Palestine and the resistance.”
The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, called it a “cowardly act and dangerous development.”
U.S. officials declined to comment on Iran’s claim that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s killing. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking in Singapore on Wednesday during a visit to Southeast and East Asia, had no comment but expressed hope the situation could still be defused.
“I don’t think war is inevitable. I maintain that. I think there’s always room and opportunities for diplomacy,” he told reporters. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we keep things from turning into a broader conflict throughout the region.” He said he had not yet spoken to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.
Israel’s silence was in keeping with its usual posture following high-profile strikes and assassinations around the region, a policy of “strategic ambiguity” that allows it to avoid official responsibility for extraterritorial operations while benefiting from the deterrent effect. After the missile strike in Iranian territory in the spring — following a barrage of rockets and drones fired from Iran toward Israel — official channels were quiet.
Within hours Wednesday, analysts had moved beyond the question of Israel’s role and on to what purpose the killing served.
In the case of Shukr, which Israel has taken responsibility for, the Israeli military eliminated the Hezbollah leader they considered the group’s operational mastermind.
The IDF said it was specifically targeting the official responsible for the rocket attack that killed 12, all children and teenagers, on a village soccer field in the occupied Golan Heights. But beyond that, Shukr was a longtime lieutenant to Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and seen by the IDF as the group’s “senior military commander.”
Haniyeh’s killing may serve a more symbolic goal, Guzansky said.
Haniyeh was Hamas’s longtime political leader who lived mostly in the Qatari capital Doha. But his role at the top of the group’s hierarchy has been in question since Hamas’s military leader in Gaza, Yehiya Sinwar, launched the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and had been seen to manage the war along with negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release ever since.
“Sinwar might be pretty happy right now. The two were rivals inside of Hamas,” Guzansky said. But Haniyeh’s killing could have immediate impact on the most recent round of talks taking place in Rome, which U.S. officials had described as the most promising for months. Haniyeh retained an important role in negotiations, and was a key decision-maker along with Sinwar, according to a diplomat briefed on the talks.
“He was someone who saw the value of a deal and was instrumental to getting certain breakthroughs in the talks,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the negotiations. “At this stage, it’s unclear what the effect will be on cease-fire talks.”
Mick Mulroy, a former CIA and Marine Corps official and top Pentagon aide for the Middle East during the Trump administration, said Haniyeh’s killing represented an “absolute embarrassment” for Iran.
“Haniyeh was their guest,” he said. “This was a complete failure of their security.” He said Israel “obviously had exquisite intelligence in order to carry out this precise assassination strike.”
Both Iran and Hamas promised to retaliate.
“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,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a statement Wednesday, according to state-run media.
Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, promised revenge for Haniyeh, whose funeral is set to take place in Doha on Friday. The killing was a “significant blow to the Palestinian cause,” he said, though he added, “Hamas is an institutional movement that remains unharmed by the martyrdom of its leader.”
Susannah George in Dubai, Michael Birnbaum in Singapore, Missy Ryan and Miriam Berger in Jerusalem, Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Hazem Balousha and Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo and Hajar Harb in London contributed to this report.
