Iran and Its Allies Mourn Militant Leaders, Vow Revenge against Israel

The Washington Post

17:11 JST, August 2, 2024

JERUSALEM – Mourners in Iran and Lebanon commemorated slain militant leaders Thursday, as they vowed retribution against common enemy Israel and signaled that the most recent paroxysm of violence gripping the Middle East may be far from over.

Thousands of people, some waving Palestinian and Iranian flags, joined a funeral procession in the Iranian capital for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed a day earlier in a murky attack in Tehran. In a Beirut suburb, hundreds of fighters, supporters and dignitaries also gathered for the funeral of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander Israel targeted in an airstrike Tuesday night.

Iranian officials have accused Israel of conducting the operation that killed Haniyeh, who was the group’s top political operative, and vowed revenge. Iran said Haniyeh, who was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of its new president, was hit by a “projectile” on the fourth floor of the building where he was staying in the northern part of the city.

“They knew Haniyeh’s location from his mobile” phone, Taher al-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser and close aide of the leader, said Thursday. Israel has so far declined to comment on his death, but in a news briefing, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the airstrike in Beirut was the only one Israel carried out “anywhere in the Middle East” that night.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prayed over Haniyeh’s coffin in a ceremony that – in another sign of the weight Tehran has given to the Palestinian cause and the constellation of anti-Israeli militant groups it backs across the region – was also joined by the country’s president and parliament speaker.

Khalil al-Hayya – a senior Hamas official who, like Haniyeh, was visiting the Iranian capital for President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration – said Hamas and its fellow militant groups would remain united against Israel.

“The path of resistance will continue and Haniyeh’s blood will not be [spilled] in vain,” he told the crowd.

At the memorial in Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, addressing the crowd by video link, said his group’s decades-long conflict with Israel had reached a turning point and promised a consequential response to the killing of Shukr, who died in an airstrike Tuesday that Israel touted as proof of its military might.

“We have entered a new stage different from the one before,” Nasrallah said, adding that Israel would have to “wait for the anger of the honorable people in this nation, the revenge of the honorable people in this nation, for all this blood.”

Nasrallah’s comments suggested that Hezbollah, with a massive arsenal believed to include more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, would seek to exceed the scale of its daily military exchanges with Israel.

When senior operatives have been killed in the past, the group has fired massive rocket barrages at Israel. But all Nasrallah would say Thursday is that retaliation was certain.

“We are looking for a real response, not a nominal one,” he said. “If this response will come in parts, or simultaneously, Israel does not know.”

Israel has described the strike on Shukr, which killed at least six other people, as its answer to an attack that killed a group of children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights days earlier. Hezbollah has denied any role in that strike.

Senior leaders of Iran-backed groups in the region met Thursday in Tehran to discuss plans to retaliate against Israel, according to two individuals briefed on the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters about the matter.

Khamenei was present at the meeting, which also included officials from Hezbollah, Iraqi militant groups and other armed forces allied with Tehran.

As the threats against Israel mounted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without mentioning Haniyeh, heralded Israel’s recent military actions against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

“We will exact a very high price for any act of aggression against us from any quarter whatsoever,” he said following a briefing Thursday by the Israeli military’s Home Front Command.

Also Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had killed Hamas’s military commander, Mohammed Deif, ending weeks of speculation about whether its July 13 strike in the Gaza Strip had achieved its objective. The strike targeting Deif deepened global criticism of Israel’s Gaza operation after it killed at least 90 people, according to Palestinian authorities, in an area designated by Israel as a safe zone for civilians.

Netanyahu said the killing of Deif, whom Israel described as mastermind of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks into Israel, “underscores a simple principle, which we have set: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”

Together, the recent operations underscored Israel’s willingness and ability to target adversaries beyond its borders, including deep in hostile territory – and suggested that Netanyahu’s government, like the leaders of Iran and its militant allies, is unlikely to heed calls from the United States and other outside powers to put the ongoing cycle of violence to rest.

They also reflect the reality of a widening regional conflict as Netanyahu vows to push ahead with its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, now approaching the one-year mark. The war, and its heavy civilian toll, has isolated Israel globally and created deep strains in Israel’s dealings with its chief ally, the United States.

The Biden administration, while promising to aid Israel’s defense, has urged Netanyahu to wrap up the Gaza campaign and do what is required to reach a deal with Hamas that would usher in a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of remaining hostages taken Oct. 7.

Analysts have suggested the killing of Haniyeh, who served as a top negotiator for Hamas, could jeopardize negotiations to stop the fighting in Gaza.

Speaking during a visit to Mongolia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a demand to “all parties” in the Gaza conflict to stop taking escalatory actions, a message clearly aimed at Israel a day after Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran.

Blinken did not call out Israel by name, nor did he acknowledge that Israel had killed Haniyeh, but it still amounted to the angriest denunciation of Israeli actions by a senior U.S. leader after the dual killings of major Israeli foes.

Asked whether the United States had issued Israel a “blank check” to conduct operations in the Middle East, Blinken – who has typically been upbeat about his efforts to halt the fighting – offered an unusually glum assessment.

“Right now, the path that the region is on is for more conflicts, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity, and it is crucial that we break the cycle. And that starts with a cease-fire,” Blinken told reporters in the Mongolian capital.

“To get there, it also first requires all parties to stop taking any escalatory actions. It also requires them to find reasons to come to an agreement, not to look for reasons to delay or say no to the agreement,” he said.

Blinken, who has been touring Asia for more than a week, said he had spent the past 24 hours on the phone with Middle Eastern leaders to try to salvage the cease-fire efforts. He also sought to distance the United States from Haniyeh’s killing, saying it had received no forewarning of the attack.

The Biden administration has faced intense domestic criticism, including from within the president’s own Democratic Party, for its support of Israel, even as the Israel-Gaza war has generated intense friction between Washington and Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last week, where he gave a fiery address to the U.S. Congress, highlighted those strains, and the politically charged nature of America’s role in arming Israel in its war in Gaza. In addition to President Biden, Netanyahu met with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke on the phone Thursday, the White House said – a call that also included Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic nominee.

The president “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran,” according to a White House readout of the call, and said efforts to support Israel’s defense, including against drones and ballistic missiles, will also include “new defensive U.S. military deployments.”

Israel’s military remained on high alert Thursday evening in preparation for possible reprisals, Hagari said, adding that unidentified “international partners” had increased their forces in the region to help if needed.

In Lebanon, Khadija Fuad Shukr, one of the slain Hezbollah commander’s seven children, predicted that her father’s death would backfire for Israel.

“On the contrary, the danger will increase,” she said, speaking at the funeral Thursday, vowing that she and her siblings would continue their fight against Israel.

The United States had offered a $5 million bounty for information about Shukr, whom it accused of playing a key part in Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut that killed more than 200 American service members.

“I tell the Americans, ‘You were badly hurt by my father, and you will be hurt a lot more,’” she said.