This opinion piece by Adjunct Professor of Social Science UWA Amin Saikal originally appeared in The Age on 2 August 2024.
Assassinations have complicated efforts for peace.
In assassinating Hamas' top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukur, within hours of each other this week, Israel has raised the spectre of a regional war.
Israel has once more challenged its arch-enemies, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to retaliate. The potential for a regional inferno with major powers' involvement has never been higher.
The killing of Haniyeh and Shukur fulfils several objectives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It tallies with his aim to hunt Hamas leaders wherever they are, to cripple Hezbollah as a threat to Israel, and to signal powerfully to Tehran's leaders that it can reach wherever and whatever it wants in Iran.
For months now, Netanyahu has viewed a war with Iran as a potent means to camouflage his failure to eradicate Hamas (whose military leader, Yahya Sinwar, remains in charge of the resistance), and secure the release of Israeli hostages 10 months into his military's scorched-earth operations in Gaza.
Such a war would also, in his mind, deflect widespread opposition at home and abroad. Additionally, he has sought to oblige the United States - Israel's key security guarantor - to participate in a war Israel cannot win on its own.
Israel knows it is no longer a dominant power in the region. Its vulnerability was first tested by Hamas' October 7 offensives and subsequent resilience and Hezbollah's cross-border firing, with its position tested again in April during Iran's direct missile and drone attacks in response to Israel's bombing of the Iranian consular offices in Damascus.
Though most of the Iranian projectiles were shot down, it was US, British, French and Jordanian forces that oversaw the successful interceptions.
The US shares Israel's opposition to the threat of an Iranian-led "axis of resistance", of which Hezbollah is the most powerful sub-national force, and has committed itself to defend Israel in the event of an all-out war. Even so, it is fully cognisant of the wider danger of such a conflict.
The US knows that Iran enjoys close strategic ties with its major adversaries - Russia and China, not to mention North Korea - and that their support cannot be ruled out should a regional confrontation come to pass. As a result, the Biden administration has opposed direct participation in a regional war and has engaged in intense diplomacy to prevent further escalation.
Yet one of the biggest problems for the US is that it lacks the necessary leverage to restrain either Israel or its adversaries. Netanyahu has persistently defied Washington's cautions. And Tehran, along with its allies, views the US as a hegemonic power and committed backer of Israel despite its continued illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and its rejection of a two-state solution.
Israel crossed a red line by assassinating Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Normally based in Qatar, he was visiting to celebrate the recent election of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The strike breached Iranian security and sovereignty, and embarrassed the leadership for not being able to protect a visiting ally.
Though Pezeshkian comes from a moderate faction and has a reformist agenda, he now has no option but to join hands with the conservatives, who swirl around Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in any direct or indirect retaliation towards Israel. What form this retaliation, along with that of Hezbollah, will take and when it eventuates will be critical.
While the killing of Haniyeh and Shukur certainly shakes the axis temporarily, it is unlikely to meaningfully deter Hezbollah or Iran, or quash the Palestinian nationalist resistance. Instead, these deaths are more likely to deepen their resolve, and that of like-minded forces in the region, to pursue their trenchant opposition to Israel in whatever way possible.
Hamas may be weakened, but Hezbollah possesses the necessary means and ability to cause as much damage to the Jewish state as it has inflicted upon Gaza.
The Middle East, and for that matter the world, is now on tenterhooks. To avoid an all-out regional war, it is imperative to urgently achieve two objectives: an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages and prisoners as a foundation for a viable two-state solution, and to engage in a bargain involving Israel, Hezbollah and their outside backers, particularly the US and Iran, that creates a
mutually acceptable security space on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The absence of Haniyeh as a key element in negotiating a ceasefire, and his assassination in the heart of Iran, has made the task very difficult. But if level heads prevail on all sides, it might not be impossible yet.
Amin Saikal is emeritus professor at the ANU, an adjunct professor of social sciences at The University of Western Australia, and author of How to Lose a War: The story of America's intervention in Afghanistan.