BENGALURU: In a fast escalating Middle East crisis triggered by the nine-month-long Israel-Gaza war, the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday morning has further pushed the war-torn region into chaos.
Calling Haniyeh’s assassination as a “personal project” of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, India’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE, Talmiz Ahmad, said that this was “possibly neither discussed with nor approved by the United States. “Netanyahu, on the contrary, has been quite distant from the US president through much of the Gaza war,” he said in a telephonic conversation with this newspaper.
“With his insistence on addressing the joint session of Congress, much against President Biden’s wishes, Netanyahu has further alienated him. Following the ceasefire, Netanyahu would have lost face, faced inquiries at home for failing to protect his own people from the October 7 attack by Hamas; bring back the hostages and fulfill his avowed war aim of annihilating Hamas.
He could even have to face charges of war crimes, with the International Criminal Court seeking his arrest, and the International Court of Justice maintaining that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank as unlawful,” he said.
“By killing Haniyeh, Netanyahu has ended all prospects of the proposed ceasefire between Israel and Gaza and further provoked Tehran into engaging in a full-fledged war. But the former will not bite the bait yet,” said the domain expert.
“I do not think Iran will get provoked into a war because Tehran doesn’t have the required military capacity.Instead the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ with the Iran-led militia comprising Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has become a formidable non-conventional force in the region. They can suffer serious casualties, but they can also inflict a lot of damage on their adversaries,” he added.
Besides ending the prospects of a ceasefire, the timing of Haniyeh’s killing is also “suspect for another reason,” he added. “The newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that his country did not seek nuclear weapons. It would balance its relations with all countries, suggesting a positive outreach to the US. It is possible that Netanyahu was rattled by the prospect of improved US-Iran ties, possibly even a nuclear agreement in Biden’s last six months, and wanted to scuttle it,” Ahmad said.