Iran buries slain Hamas official as Israel braces for revenge; battle is in ‘new phase’ — Hezbollah

Iran-backed Hezbollah’s leader said the group’s battle against Israel had entered a new phase and vowed to respond following the killing of a top commander of the militant group in Beirut.

Israel said it had confirmed that Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ military chief, was killed in a strike in Gaza last month, an announcement that came a day after the group’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran. 

Iran buries senior Hamas official as Israel braces for revenge

Iran’s Supreme Leader led prayers over the coffin of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political chief assassinated in Tehran this week, as the Israeli military heightened its alert over potential retaliatory attacks.

Iranian state TV showed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leading the start of the funeral procession before Haniyeh’s coffin was driven into the city centre, through crowds waving Palestinian flags while some onlookers called for revenge. Iran and Hamas say he was killed by Israel, which hasn’t issued a denial and has vowed to kill all Hamas leaders since the group’s attack on the country on 7 October.

In Beirut, a similar procession was due to be held for a high-ranking member of Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, who was killed in the Lebanese capital by an Israeli missile on Tuesday, just hours before Haniyeh’s death. Israel took responsibility for that one, saying it was in response to the killing of a dozen youths playing soccer in the Golan Heights on Saturday.

Pledges to respond — from Hamas, Hezbollah and their sponsor, Iran — for the two assassinations have rung out across the region.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Thursday that the killings crossed his red line, saying the conflict now is an “open battle on all fronts”.

But he stopped short of declaring the killings as an act of war and said his group fights both in anger and with “logic and wisdom”, reflecting the group’s declared intention not to widen the fighting with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that “Israel is in a very high level of preparedness for any scenario — both in defence and attack. We will exact a very heavy price for any act of aggression against us from any arena.”

With Israel’s air defence systems on high alert, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that “if Israel is attacked, yes we will help Israel defend itself”.

Khamenei had earlier said that Iran had a “duty to seek vengeance” for Haniyeh’s death and Israel should expect a “severe punishment”.

Amid questions about how Israel managed to hit Haniyeh in Tehran, The New York Times reported that he was killed by a bomb smuggled several months earlier into the guesthouse where he was staying. It cited seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians, and a US official, all of whom it said spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive details.

Read more: Death of a Hamas chief suggests failure at heart of Iran’s rule

The US, a key Israeli ally, is striving to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-blown war across the Middle East. The Biden administration used intermediaries to send warnings to Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen not to escalate, according to people familiar with US policy. The US also counselled Israel on the need for caution in its next steps, the people said.

Thursday marked the 300th day of the war between Israel and Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union. Fighting continues unabated, with Israel’s military reporting the striking of loaded launchers aimed at the country. On Wednesday, Israeli warplanes killed two journalists working for Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned network.

Hezbollah chief says battle against Israel enters ‘new phase’

Iran-backed Hezbollah’s leader said the group’s battle against Israel had entered a new phase and vowed to respond following the killing of a top commander of the militant group in Beirut.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said Israel’s assassination of his senior adviser, Fuad Shukr, in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday and the subsequent killing of Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran crossed his red lines, saying the conflict now was an “open battle on all fronts.

“We are now facing a major battle that has surpassed the idea of support fronts,” he said, reiterating the only way to stop escalation in the region would be for Israel to end the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah has been firing missiles and mortars into Israel almost daily since 7 October, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Nasrallah said his group had halted attacks against Israel in the past two days after the assassination but they would resume on Friday as usual. The response to Shukr’s killing was “inevitable”, he said.

Nasrallah was speaking during the funeral of Shukr in Beirut, where thousands of Hezbollah supporters gathered and took part in the procession that followed their leader’s speech.

The Israeli assault in Beirut, which Nasrallah said killed seven people including Shukr and two children, was a response to a deadly rocket assault in the Golan Heights over the weekend.

Israel blamed Hezbollah for the strike on a football field in the Israel-controlled region. Hezbollah denied responsibility.

Israel says it’s confirmed Hamas' Deif was killed in Gaza strike

Israel said it had confirmed that Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ military chief, was killed in a strike in Gaza last month, an announcement that came a day after Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.

The military had previously said it was all but certain Deif had died in its 13 July attack in the southern city of Khan Younis. Hamas said at the time that the strike killed about 100 people, but denied Deif was among them. It hasn’t reacted to the latest announcement.

Deif’s elimination — if confirmed — and that of Haniyeh would constitute major achievements for  Netanyahu’s government. But they also may complicate efforts to broker a truce in the almost 10-month-long war in Gaza, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble during Israel’s ground and air assault, and secure the release of 115 hostages still held by Hamas.

Netanyahu would be able to declare that his mission has largely been accomplished if Israel could also kill or arrest Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, but it wouldn’t mean the group had been eliminated, said Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk consultancy RANE.

“The reality is that Hamas will be able to regenerate its leadership structure, because it was designed from its inception to accept assassination more or less as a fact of life,” Bohl said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Thursday. “The politburo, the top decision-making body within Hamas, is designed for there to be attrition.”

Almost 40,000 Palestinians have died since Israel began its retaliatory offensive on Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters.

The supreme commander of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Deif was viewed as one of the key planners of the October assault and announced it in a pre-recorded speech as it was happening. He has long been a key target for Israel, which unsuccessfully tried to kill him on several occasions.

“Over the years, Deif directed, planned, and carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency, known as the Shin Bet, said in a joint statement. They also accused him of commanding Hamas’ terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip by issuing commands and instructions to the group’s military wing.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted a picture of himself on social media platform X crossing Deif off a wall chart containing the images of wanted Hamas leaders.

Deif, whose given name was Mohammed al-Masri, was born in 1965 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis — his precise date of birth isn’t clear — and grew up there with Sinwar. He studied at the Islamic University in Gaza, graduating with a science degree and was one of the founders of the armed wing of Hamas in the late 1980s.

Deif was arrested in the late 1990s as part of a large-scale crackdown against Hamas by the Palestinian Authority, the entity created in 1994 to administer limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Deif was believed to have escaped from prison before the outbreak of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2000. He rose to be Hamas’ supreme military leader after his predecessor, Salah Shehada, was killed in a massive Israeli air strike on Gaza City in 2002. DM

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