While no small number of esteemed experts have expressed their opinion that the elimination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s politburo, will only make matters worse for Israel, Graeme Wood is not so sure. First, he looks at the admittedly real possibility of a widening of the conflict:
Iran is naturally mortified that it could not protect its vassal even in Tehran, and it will seek revenge. But it has tried to avoid all-out war for years. To start one now would be an extreme gamble, at a time when Israel has just given Iran reason to doubt that fortune favors it.
It seems in this case that Israel found a middle way, by attacking an Iranian ally, on Iranian soil, in such a way as to prove to the other allies that Iran cannot protect them. It implies that the link between the backer and the backed might not be as reliable as either assumed. If that message is received as intended, Haniyeh’s assassination will have de-escalated regional tensions rather than ratcheted them up.
As for the hostage negotiations, he writes:
The likely effect of the death of Haniyeh on the war in Gaza is less than one might imagine. Haniyeh was a political leader, and over the course of ten months he delivered almost nothing in the way of political compromise.
To the contrary, whoever succeeds Haniyeh (likely his predecessor, Khaled Meshal) might feel much more motivated to produce a hostage deal acceptable to the Israelis. After all, the death of the last person to fail at your job can have a clarifying effect. And if it is true, as Wood asserts, that Hamas’s leaders in Doha have little leverage to force a deal on a reluctant Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, then there is all the more reason to kill the rest of them.
Read more on Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/ismail-haniyeh-assassination-message/679303/?gift=yu0w8tV0rtQS7FzAEdZpRngEIWC-6AFtmJM3GhZss2g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share