Will Iran respond to Israel’s assassinations?

The Israelis were busy last night. First, Fouad Shukur, Hezbollah’s top military commander was, in the words of Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant, ‘eliminated’ in Beirut. Shukur was targeted for his role in a rocket attack on the Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 Druze children and teenagers playing football. Hours later, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he was visiting for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

It’s a huge blow for Hamas and their Iranian paymasters. Haniyeh was the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy, and is the most senior Hamas official to be killed since the war started. ‘A treacherous Zionist raid on his residence,’ the Palestinian group said in the early hours of this morning, announcing his death. It was, the group added, a ‘severe escalation’. Israel has not yet claimed responsibility for his killing (they don’t comment on assassinations, generally), but having always vowed to avenge the 7 October attack, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out who was behind the assassination.