Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was Iran’s “duty” to avenge the death of Ismail Haniyeh after the political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was assassinated in Tehran Tuesday evening.
Israel has so far not commented publicly on the attack while Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the operation only underscored the urgent need to reach a cease-fire deal to end the nearly 10-month war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“We consider his revenge our duty,” the ayatollah said, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. Mr. Haniyeh was killed shortly after attending the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The killing came on the same day another Israeli airstrike in Beirut targeted a senior commander of the Lebanon-based, Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, fueling fears that the Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza could quickly morph into a much broader Middle East war pitting Israel against Iran and its numerous allies around the region.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Lebanon strike after a missile blamed on Hezbollah struck a group of children at a playground in the Golan Heights earlier this week. Mr. Haniyeh, by contrast, has long been believed to be a target of Israeli forces as the political face of the militant group that carried out the deadly Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel.
Qatar, which offers a home to top Hamas officials and is a key player in the U.S.-backed negotiations seeking a cease-fire in Gaza, quickly condemned the Haniyeh killing.
“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 on 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.”
The governments of Russia and Turkey also denounced the assassination, and Egypt said the attacks in Beirut and Tehran indicated that Mr. Netanyahu’s government no longer was interested in a peace deal.
Mr. Haniyeh’s funeral is reportedly set for Friday night in Qatar, and Iranian state television said Iran plans three days of mourning for the dead Palestinian leader.
Iran will “defend its territorial integrity, dignity, honor and pride, and will make the terrorist occupiers regret their cowardly act,” Mr. Pezeshkian said in a statement. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and top officials of Hezbollah and the Yemeni-based rebel group the Houthis all sharply condemned the attack.
Mr. Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, on a tour of Asia, issued a plea for calm and said the reports of the killing did not justify a wider conflict in the region.
“All that I can tell you right now is that I think nothing takes away from the importance of … getting to the cease-fire, which is manifestly in the interests of the hostages and bringing them home,” Mr. Blinken told Channel News Asia during a stop in Singapore. “It’s manifestly in the interests of Palestinians who are suffering terribly every single day — children, women, men in Gaza that have been caught in this crossfire of Hamas’s making.”
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Mr. Haniyeh, 62, joined the militant group Hamas — which Israel and the U.S. have officially designated as a terrorist organization — when it was founded in 1987. He served as an aid to Ahmad Yassin, the group’s founder, and rose throughout the years until he became its top political leader, replacing Khaled Mashaal in 2017.
He was considered a relatively moderate figure in the militant group, and Hamas’ military commander on the ground in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, remains at large and the subject of an intense Israeli manhunt inside the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have long been rivals for power in Gaza and the West Bank, but the leader of the Palestinian Authority also quickly condemned the killing on Wednesday.
In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination was a “cowardly act and dangerous development.” Palestinian leaders issued calls Wednesday for strikes to protest the killing.
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.