As the Daily Mail-ish headline suggests, the political and military situation in Israel and environs has become overly dynamic, in a bad way. We’ll try to be spare given that the members of the Axis of Resistance are almost certainly considering retaliatory measures against Israel, as well as how to deal with the US.
Haniyeh had been in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and was staying in a residence for veterans in the north of the city, state-affiliated news outlet Fars reported.
At around 2 a.m. local time, an “airborne guided projectile” targeted where Haniyeh was staying, according to Iranian state-run outlet IRNA which said his bodyguard was also killed.
IRNA said further investigations are underway to determine the details of the operation and the position from where the projectile was fired.
And a visual:
From the place of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran this morning. pic.twitter.com/OLSKjwLsYm
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) July 31, 2024
Even though Israel has not taken credit for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, pretty much everyone with an operating brain cell thinks Israel was responsible. It’s not as if there are a lot of other candidates who have both the means and the motive, particularly since Israel has taken a victory lap for earlier attacks on Haniyeh’s family. Military Watch has not only fingered Israel as the perp but also identified an F-35 as the probable instrument in From Israeli Attack Kills Hamas Leader in Tehran: F-35 Precision Strike Suspected.
Even though it can’t yet be proven, the assassination attempts took place right after Netanyahu’s visit to the US, and also likely had US intelligence/targeting support. And even without the provocative timing, one would expect the US to have its hand in these actions.
Killing a top Hamas official in Iran is clearly intended to drag Iran into the conflict in an open manner, since as many experts have pointed out, Israel sees no way out of the mess it has gotten itself into absent the US coming to its rescue. Yet it seems highly unlikely that head of the Joint Chiefs Charles Brown was misleading Israel when he warned that the US really could not do much to help, particularly given that that sort of message would go over badly among the many bought and paid for AIPAC stooges in the Beltway.
As we stress in the headline, and oddly nearly all press accounts either omit completely or bury, Ismail Haniyeh was not just a top member of Hamas’ political wing, but a (the?) lead negotiator in the peace talks. From Qatar’s official statement on the killing from prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani , courtesy Middle East Eye:
The approach of political assassinations and intentional escalation against civilians in Gaza at every stage of the negotiation prompts the question: How can negotiations take place in which one party kills its negotiator at the same time? Regional and international peace needs serious partners and an international stance against escalation and disregard for the lives of the peoples of the region.
In case you doubt Qatar’s claim, from a Reuters report last November:
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader based in Qatar, has been the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy as war has raged back in Gaza where his family home was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in November.
Appointed to the militant group’s top job in 2017, he has moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel restrictions of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in the latest ceasefire deal
The Israelis were very much out to punish Hamiyeh, confirming they successfully targeted his boys in April:
After ‘Israel’ killed 3 of his sons and several of his grandchildren in Gaza, today they assassinated Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. pic.twitter.com/rjRSPH3HrT
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) July 31, 2024
In addition to the statements at Middle East Eye from Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah, Jordan, Türkiye, Yemen, Malaysia, Afghanistan, and China condemning the assassination, an Anadolu Agency story adds the Lebanese government, Pakistan, and Russia. The Jakarta Post features a critical statement from Egypt (but none from Indonesia). The Times of India reports that Iraq depicted the killing as a “flagrant violation of international law” and quotes Syria “Syria condemns this blatant Zionist aggression…(a) despicable act”. So as far as I can tell, the only major Muslim countries holding their tongues are Indonesia and Egypt.
From Iran’s perspective, an attack within its national borders, and of a foreign guest, is in some ways worse than the Israel strike on Iran’s embassy grounds in Damascus that killed members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Recall then that Iran agreed with the US to engage in a controlled retaliation. Iran identified its targets, which were exclusively military. This was the infamous 300 drone attack, which were designed to flush out information about Israeli (and supporting US and French air defenses) with cruise and ballistic missiles following. Not only did Iran penetrate the Israeli defenses and hit what were supposedly some of the best protected spots in Israel, but colleague with diplomatic contacts said that the airbase that Iran hit had two airstrips, and Iran landed missiles in the dead center of each to demonstrate their precision capabilities. And these were not Iran’s most advanced missiles.
To add insult to injury, the cost of the Israel-Western missiles expended in this defensive operation was over $2 billion, while the cost of the Iran attack was under $100 million.
So Israel appears to be hewing to the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein: doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.
There are many tweets, nearly all with no retweets, from early July along these lines:
The US military released photos of the Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group together with the USS Wasp attack ship and the British Navy ship HMS Duncan in the waters of the Mediterranean, amid fears of an escalation between #Israel and #Hezbollah https://t.co/lOJl2u7EAE pic.twitter.com/8e9PQs74ib
— Breaking News (@TheNewsTrending) July 1, 2024
Scott Ritter, who has gone from being a friend of Israel to a very loud critic, particularly of its supposed military prowess, has repeatedly dismissed the US aircraft carrier threat display. He says they can transport 1200 Marines, but if they were to actually try to Do Anything, “They will all die.”. Ritter has not bothered unpacking why a mission would be a disaster, but he seems to think this is so obvious as to not be worth explaining (note that Ritter does often go into current and historical Middle East military nerdery). So this measure appears to be a combo plate of threat supply plus additional air support.
Yet we have Tony Blinken continuing with his intelligence-insulting prattle. Is he genuinely this stupid or is he relying on the Western media not bothering to mention that Haniyeh was a key negotiator? Oh, and that Israel killing him is yet more proof that Israel is committed to its Palestinian extermination/ethnic cleansing project? From the Times of India:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that a ceasefire in Gaza was “imperative” after the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.
Blinken refused to comment directly on the killing of Haniyeh but said at a forum in Singapore that reaching a ceasefire in Gaza “is the enduring imperative”.
“We’ve been working from day one not only to try to get to a better place in Gaza but also to prevent the conflict from spreading, whether it’s the north with Lebanon and Hezbollah, whether it’s the Red Sea with the Houthis, whether it’s Iran, Syria, Iraq, you name it,” Blinken said.
“A big key to trying to make sure that that doesn’t happen, and that we can move to a better place, is getting the ceasefire.”
Now to the assassination attempt in Beirut of senior Hezbollah commander Faoud Shakr. Israel claimed it had killed him but it is not clear they succeeded:
Defiance in #Beirut‘s southern suburbs following #Israeli strike that targeted senior #Hezbollah official Fouad Shakr. Unconfirmed reports suggesting assassination failed. No reports yet of casualties. Ball now in #Hezbollah court pic.twitter.com/OGjAKxVioW
— Hashem Osseiran (هاشم) (@HashemOsseiran) July 30, 2024
And an image:
IDF strike in south Beirut appears to have been via drone, hitting an apartment building. Israeli media is saying this was an assassination attempt on a Hezbollah official. https://t.co/4xZjFY7Bg8 pic.twitter.com/WfADqWZbsX
— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 30, 2024
More persuasively, USA Today reported:
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah responded to Tuesday’s airstrike in a statement on social media. “Your assassination attempt has failed,” Nasrallah said, adding in a separate message that “an official statement in response will be issued by the Islamic Resistance as soon as all facts are taken into account.”
The colleague with diplomatic contacts told me he had heard that Shakr had been injured but survived.
The Financial Times described how civilians died and many were injured:
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the Israeli strike on Beirut on Tuesday, carried out with a drone that launched three rockets, had targeted the area around Hizbollah’s governing Shura Council in the densely populated Haret Hreik neighbourhood, a stronghold of the militant group.
A large explosion ripped through the area, with television footage showing several floors of a residential building badly damaged and large plumes of smoke. At least three people were killed — a woman and two children — and a further 74 people were injured, some critically, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Keep in mind that Israel’s justification is strained. Hezbollah took credit for attacking a military base in the Golan Heights, which by the way is disputed territory; Israel has occupied it since . Israel claimed that Hezbollah hit a schoolyard, which killed 12 children, and that legitimates the strike into Beirut.
First, Hezbollah does not target civilians. They have better things to do with their rockets. Second, Hezbollah pointed out if it had targeted the schoolyard, there would be a crater, as opposed to shrapnel. And there was no crater.
So the far more likely explanation is that an Israeli air defense weapon hit one of the Hezbollah missiles and it was the fallout that struck the schoolyard.
Third, it was Syrian children that died. Since when does Israel harbor such concern for non-Jews?
One has to wonder what madness has overtaken Israel’s government and much of its society, to think that attacking Hezbollah and Iran are national-security advancing strategies. The IDF resistance and no doubt numerous and pointed private warnings don’t appear to have penetrated the Zionist sense of entitlement.
And speaking of madness, the Knesset has defended the right to ass rape prisoners. The IDF was set to try some soldiers who had abused a detainee to the point of inflicting severe internal injuries. Settlers stormed the IDF garrison to free the soldiers. This video not only summarizes that incident but reports that settlers went to another IDF military court to again try to stop any punishment of sadistic soldiers.
This. Is. Israel. #Rapists #Terrorists Knesset members argue that rape and torture are legitimate punishment for Palestinian detainees. https://t.co/H0LhrpY3tC
— hugo redwood (@DOHplusone) July 30, 2024
The row quickly wound up before the Knesset. Twitter has many clips of the sordid debate, with representatives overwhelmingly and loudly supporting torture. The unsurprising result:
Israeli military police canceled! the arrest warrants issued against the soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman prison and limited themselves to interrogating them,
The decision came after Knesset members and National Security… pic.twitter.com/5vpOWb4m7J
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) July 31, 2024
Yesterday Moon of Alabama in Israel Might Well Fall Apart depicted this internal conflict as a potential civil war triggered by a power struggle between Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir controls the police. I recall reading many many years ago (perhaps in the Economist?) of how the IDF would try to restrain the settlers in persecuting the Palestinians only to have the police back their conduct. So this conflict has deep roots.
However, the trajectory may not be to civil war. With the settlers and police now acting as brownshirts, Israel is on its way to becoming an open fascist state. With nukes. And the US will have enabled that outcome by refusing to impose even minor constraints on Israel’s ever more horrific behavior.
