Ismail Haniyeh in Moscow in 2022 (Federation Council of Russia, CC4.0).
For months now intelligence chiefs from the US, Israel and Egypt have been meeting irregularly at venues across the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to agree a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. The Israeli assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday is, on the face of it, a major blow to that effort.
It was Haniyeh who was responsible for the Hamas end of the negotiations, linked to the other participants through the offices of the Qatari Government. ‘How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?’, Qatar’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, asked in the wake of the killing.1
Defenders of Israel’s action point out that Haniyeh was not just an interlocutor, but a senior figure in the Hamas leadership, who had cheered on the October 7 attacks.2 Leaving aside the question of how much direct influence Haniyeh’s political bureau had over Yahya Sinwar’s fighters in Gaza, these characteristics are, bluntly, what made him a credible representative in the negotiating progress.
The task of negotiating with those governments do not normally acknowledge often falls to intelligence officers. Ironically, Israel’s key representative in the Gaza talks was Mossad chief David Barnea, whose agency probably either facilitated or carried out the killing.3
It has been suggested that the chance to kill Haniyeh simply over-rode other considerations. ‘Always take the shot, u never know if there’ll be another opportunity,’ former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos commented on X.4
That, perhaps, is the perspective of an operator. There have been instances in the past where governments have opted to leave enemy leaders at large in order to negotiate with them. MI5 officer Peter Wright complained in his memoir Spycatcher that the British governor of Cyprus, Hugh Foot, spiked his plan to capture guerrilla leader Georgios Grivas in order to prioritise diplomacy.5
Suggestions that Prime Minister Netanyahu will now make an agreement from a position of strength seem optimistic.6 Israel’s choice of the assassination option is bound to raise doubts about its interest in a ceasefire deal.
The US was reportedly not consulted ahead of the Tehran attack, risking a new fracture with Israel’s key ally at the very moment when Iranian retaliation is likely.7
That is not to say that Iran does not also look weakened. That is demonstrated firstly by the location of the attack in a building controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which runs one of the country’s two intelligence agencies, secondly by its timing just after the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The election of the reformist Pezeshkian on a low turnout showed the limits of popular support for Iran’s dominant conservative faction. That disillusionment may also have taken more radical forms, given Israel’s ability to repeatedly stage dramatic operations in the country.
The domestic weakness of so many key players has contributed to the Sisyphean task faced by Middle East diplomats, conventional and unconventional. One can only hope that when the current round of escalation is concluded, they are still in a position to begin rolling the rock back up the hill.
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, X, 31 July 2024.
James Rothwell and Siham Shamalakh, Ismael Haniyeh: Hamas leader who cheered Oct 7 and led ceasefire negotiations, The Telegraph, 31 July 2024.
Two accounts which suggest the latter are:
Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti and Farnaz Fassihi, Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader, New York Times, 1 August 2024.
Barak Ravid, Planted bomb, remote control and AI: How the Mossad killed Hamas' leader in Iran, Axios, 1 August 2024.
Marc Polymeropoulos, X, 4 August 2024.
Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, Viking, 1987, p.158.
Mat Nashed, What the Ismail Haniyeh assassination means for Gaza ceasefire talks, Al Jazeera, 1 August 2024.
Barak Ravid, Biden warns Netanyahu against escalation as risk of regional war grows, Axios, 2 August 2024.