Israel widened its range of targets. Will it lead to a wider regional war? On Wednesday, a strike killed Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was visiting Tehran for the Iranian presidential inauguration. Haniyeh’s death, and resulting threats of harsh responses against Israel from Iran and its proxies, comes one day after Israel claimed that it killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukur in Beirut in retaliation for an alleged Hezbollah attack that killed twelve children in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams. What will these two apparent assassinations mean for the broader regional conflict in the Middle East? And how might Haniyeh’s death and the response from the Axis of Resistance affect Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations? Our experts delve into the possibilities below.
Click to jump to an expert analysis:
Kirsten Fontenrose: The Gaza conflict is already spilling over into a regional war
Beth Sanner: Israel boldly threads a needle
Thomas Warrick: Haniyeh’s death will not change Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel
Danny Citrinowicz: Even if the current escalation stops here, the next one is around the corner
Alex Plitsas: The difference between these strikes and Israel’s Iran strike in April
Holly Dagres: The attacks reveal—yet again—the Islamic Republic’s intelligence weaknesses
Nour Dabboussi: Dark clouds now hang over Beirut
With the parties eager to avoid a wider war, the primary danger remains miscalculation
It was a bad day to be an Iranian proxy. From Tehran’s perspective, the significance wasn’t only the importance of the targets—Hamas’s Haniyeh, Lebanese Hezbollah’s Shukur, and Kataib Hezbollah’s drone bases—but the locations, the near simultaneous timing, and what they demonstrate about the reach of Israel and the United States.
Israel was able to find, fix, and finish Shukur in Beirut, in a building close to Hezbollah’s Shura Council. It was able to do the same (presumably, as Jerusalem hasn’t confirmed this action) to Haniyeh in Tehran, at his state-provided residence while he was visiting to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. And the US strikes in Iraq, the first since February, took place south of Baghdad against a key element of the Iranian-backed umbrella organization Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has taken credit for attacks on US forces and on Israel.
Together, the United States and Israel have demonstrated, once again, their impressive intelligence and strike capacities in places that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) undoubtedly has put on the top of their list to defend. It is also notable that senior US officials are currently in Riyadh to discuss US defensive maritime and air operations against the Houthis, another key Tehran terrorist partner whose recent deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv triggered a direct Israeli counterattack in Hodeidah. I hope these talks are intended to gain Saudi cooperation for a wider US special operations campaign to target Houthi leadership. This all follows, of course, Israel’s successful killing in April of senior Quds Force leader Mohammad Reza Zahedi in what was purported to be the Iranian consulate in Damascus, an attack that prompted Iran to launch an unprecedented, large-scale, direct strike on Israel less than two weeks later. If it were not for the US-led, region-wide air defenses, that Iranian attack would have killed a large number of Israelis.
Of course, Iran and its proxies have promised to respond to these attacks once again. But as I have described previously, the current environment in the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7 is one that unfortunately advantages the Iranian regime. Indeed, Israel’s actions can be seen as attempts to degrade this advantage. From Tehran’s perspective, they would thus be foolhardy to intentionally provoke the kind of regional war that would reverse this progress, especially one that risks involving the United States. Therefore, just as it was predictable that Israel would respond to Hezbollah’s attack against civilians in Majdal Shams in a targeted fashion rather than launching a full-scale war in Lebanon, I suspect Tehran will also respond in a manner that it believes will avoid a regional war. The primary danger today therefore remains more a question of miscalculation than of intent.
—William F. Wechsler is the senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.
The Gaza conflict is already spilling over into a regional war
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh should surprise no one other than Iran’s Air Defense Force. Israel was clear on October 8 that it would seek to eliminate Hamas leadership anywhere in the world. Israel has not targeted the group’s political leadership in Doha out of respect for Qatar’s role as mediator, at the behest of the United States. Traveling to Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration was a known risk.
One thing is certain: This assassination will not alter Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar’s calculus. In fact, when news of the assassination first broke, I heard questions among Palestinians about whether this was an inside job orchestrated by Sinwar to eliminate a colleague who might sell him out. It would not be the first Sinwar assassination of his own political leaders. Sinwar likely reads this probable Israeli operation as confirmation that Israel cannot reach him, since he is higher on the target list than was Haniyeh. Sinwar will be as unenthusiastic now about making a hostage deal with Israel as he was before Haniyeh’s death. Haniyeh and his political ilk have not figured into Sinwar’s calculus at any point, and were rarely looped in on it.
Smart questions are being asked after this event. Will it force the new Iranian president to abandon his reformist tendencies and move to the right? This depends on how “reformist” you believe he is; Israel’s assessment is “not very.” Pezeshkian’s statements affirming allegiance with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis immediately after his election seem to support this assessment, as do videos of him warmly embracing Haniyeh this week in Tehran. But we can expect ongoing debate about whether coming hardline decisions out of his office were inevitable or colored by the assassination. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for his part, has threatened revenge against Israel.
Another question being asked: Does this assassination in Tehran indicate that Israel can reach all of its adversaries inside Iran? Mulling this over will unnerve IRGC and Iranian political leadership and could influence decision making. It will make Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah wonder why he is alive. It will make Abdulmalik al-Houthi in Yemen glad he did not attend. In the United States, calls from some corners for Doha to expel Hamas political leadership were countered with the argument that it would not be as easy to track and monitor them if they relocated to Iran. This remains comparatively true, but the assassination of Haniyeh makes the argument almost moot.
A third question under discussion: How will this event, on the heels of the assassination of Hezbollah senior military advisor Fuad Shukur, impact Hezbollah’s strategy? Shukur’s death was in retaliation for a strike on a dozen Syrian Druze children that Hezbollah was loath to claim. The group may have wished to consider the case closed, a tit for tat. The strike on Haniyeh will put pressure on Hezbollah from their peers inside Gaza and Tehran to bundle the two assassinations and retaliate for both. Hezbollah would be wise to analyze the two events separately, focus bilaterally, recall Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s statement of regret after the 2006 war with Israel, and consider their own interests.
The fourth question resurfacing is whether the conflict in Gaza is now spilling over and threatening to engulf the region. Attacks on Israel from as far as Iran and Yemen as well as Syria and Iraq, the quick action of regional states such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan in preventing further loss of life in such attacks, and creeping escalation despite the tireless diplomatic energy of Egypt and Qatar all indicate that we are already at the point of regional spillover. It is the interests of the parties in the conflict themselves that have dictated the ebb and flow of escalation thus far.
—Kirsten Fontenrose is a nonresident fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. She was previously the senior director for the Gulf at the National Security Council.
The strikes were a tactical success for Israel. But the strategic impact will depend on Iran’s response.
In a matter of twenty-four hours, Israel killed not one but two of the most senior officials in the so-called Axis of Resistance. The deaths of both Hezbollah senior military leader and Jihad Council member, Fuad Shukur, and Hamas’s political leader, Ismael Haniyeh, led to Israel having its most impactful day of tactical successes in months. But tactical success does not always beget strategic victory, and Israel’s short- and long-term strategy remains unclear, likely to be driven in part by the answers to two key questions.
Will Iran independently respond or seek to attach itself to whatever retaliation Hamas and Hezbollah undertake? For Iran, which always prioritizes regime stability above everything else, it might see the timing and targets of the assassination as an opportunity to claim retaliation while foisting the actual kinetic response off on Hezbollah and Hamas. This would be the traditional pathway of response and is probably the most likely one. But two potentially interceding considerations may challenge Iran in taking this path.
First, Haniyeh’s assassination happened in Iran. In April, following Israel’s killing of senior IRGC officials in Damascus, Iran decided it had to respond directly, opening a new stage in the shadow war between Iran and Israel. In this case, it was not an Iranian official killed, but Iran may decide that it has to respond itself in order to not fall into a deterrence deficit against Israel.
Second, Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the Pezeshkian’s inauguration. The new president was viewed as the “reformist” in the election and lacks the depth of ties to Iran’s security establishment and IRGC that some of the other candidates had. Ultimately, it will be the supreme leader who signs off on any response. But Pezeshkian may decide, one day into his term, that he needs to align with whatever response the IRGC prefers or risk diminished standing and immediate tensions with one of the most important power bases in the Iranian government.
What does this mean for the hostage negotiations? The killing of Haniyeh, one of the primary negotiators for Hamas, does not mean the chances of a hostage release and temporary ceasefire are over, but they will almost certainly be delayed—again. Haniyeh was negotiating from Doha, but decision making power has always rested with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the mastermind behind the October 7 terrorist attack. That reality does not change because of the assassination.
Sinwar has long calculated that for Hamas, continued civilian deaths is ultimately a net positive, and has been more reluctant to agree to a ceasefire than others. But the conditions on the ground in Gaza don’t shift because of Haniyeh’s assassination. Hamas fighters are reported to be exhausted and desperate for the reprieve a ceasefire might bring.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has continuously changed the terms of a ceasefire but has always been clear since immediately after October 7 that Israel will hunt and kill the leaders of Hamas responsible for the attack. The prime minister may view a byproduct of Haniyeh’s death to be that it provides him sufficient political goodwill to make a deal that the ultranationalists in his coalition continue to oppose.
Iran’s, Hezbollah’s, and Hamas’s responses will drive the direction of the Middle East for the coming weeks and months: a reversion to current tensions or toward a potential broader regional war.
—Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He is a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council.
Watch for a split within Hamas, and pressure on Iran and Hezbollah for a calibrated retaliation
There is no doubt that the assassination of Haniyeh, Hamas’s head of the Politburo and chief political figure, will impact the war in Gaza and the entire region in numerous ways. Here are six thoughts on this significant event:
- Israel could have killed Haniyeh months ago but didn’t want to compromise its relationship with Qatar, which remains the chief mediator with the Islamist group. Plus, the presence of the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the region, in Qatar prevents Israel from carrying out political assassinations in the Gulf Emirate. That’s why when Haniyeh entered Iran, which is known to be compromised by Israeli intelligence assets, and following the attack on the Golan Heights, an opportunity presented itself to take him out. After this assassination, Hamas is unlikely to move its headquarters out of Qatar, which affords the group unparalleled safety.
- The assassination was likely ordered to coincide with the strike against Hezbollah’s senior commander in Beirut’s suburbs hours earlier to send a strong signal that Israel could fight on two fronts simultaneously. However, Netanyahu’s government may have intended for the assassination to pressure Hamas’s senior leadership into accepting a hostage deal and ending the war in Gaza, given the limits to how much more can be done on the ground in the coastal enclave. This is especially so following the assassination of senior military commanders in the Gaza Strip, including Marwan Issa and probably Mohammed Deif—not to mention the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri in January in Lebanon. Yahya Sinwar remains the only major figure still out of Israel’s reach.
- This event will likely generate pressure on Hamas, even if the group doesn’t capitulate or change its stance immediately, to end the war and seek to preserve what remains of its political structures. The group is weakened militarily despite not being outright defeated. However, it is interested in self-preservation, and the group’s political wing may view this event as a monumental shift that necessitates ending the war quickly to ensure the continuity of Hamas’s political relevance, which requires the survival of its senior political figures. In the months following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and during negotiations, Haniyeh was a mere messenger and courier of communication that was sent to Sinwar in Gaza. This means that Haniyeh’s actual influence over Hamas’s military wing was quite limited. The assassination will likely widen the gap between the political and military wings of Hamas, both of whom have divergent interests that are increasingly disconnected.
- Haniyeh’s assassination may expedite political reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, integrating the group into the Palestine Liberation Organization and offering it a political off-ramp that could save it from its trouble. While the agreement last week in China is part of a long series of attempts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, the assassination may finally force Hamas to feel unprecedented pressure that finally bridges the seemingly irreconcilable differences between it and its chief political rival.
- Iran will likely respond to the assassination in a manner similar to its missile and drone strikes against Israel in April. Haniyeh’s death mere hours after the inauguration of the new Iranian president on Iranian soil is a huge, humiliating blow to the Islamic Republic’s prowess and prestige. There’s no way that the IRGC will not respond directly or in a dramatic fashion. Iran is unlikely to launch an all-out confrontation with Israel over Haniyeh’s assassination. However, Tehran has no choice but to attempt to restore its deterrence capability, fearing that its people and regional proxies will start doubting the country’s power. For Pezeshkian, his tenure begins with a major embarrassment and security incident that forces him to take a hardline position toward Israel and the United States. He’ll quickly lose whatever “moderate” margins he was hoping to operate within, especially as he vowed to remove Western sanctions, which are crippling the nation’s economy. Pezeshkian will have to toe the line of hardliners seeking revenge and retaliation, greatly frustrating his efforts to usher in new geopolitical opportunities for his nation.
- Hezbollah is facing a difficult choice to either return to the pre-Majdal Shams strike established rules of engagement with Israel or escalate to retaliate for the strike on Beirut’s suburb and avenge the assassination of Haniyeh. The group does not want an escalation that triggers an all-out war but will nevertheless face immense pressure to respond to a significant slap in the face of its partner Hamas and chief sponsor Iran.
—Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He is an American writer and analyst who grew up in Gaza City.
Israel boldly threads a needle
Israel has carefully calibrated blows against its main adversaries in the region in the past week, with an assist (although not intended as such) of the United States in its own strike against Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq. Israel is executing deterrence in its most bold and raw form, and may have done so without the full blessing, or even foreknowledge, of the United States. This could have long-term implications for the bilateral relationship. But for now, the question is whether Israel has calibrated correctly in deterring Iran and its proxies or if they have set off an escalatory cycle. The answer to that cannot be known until Iran’s supreme leader decides on Tehran’s next steps.
The target selections and methods speak volumes about Israel’s capabilities and the intended effects:
Beirut: The strike that killed Fuad Shukur not only demonstrates that Israel has the intelligence and capability to conduct a precision strike on Hezbollah’s senior leadership on its home turf, but it also removes its main operational commander, which could affect Hezbollah’s military command-and-control in the near term. Israel seems to have conducted this strike against the wishes of the United States. But because Shukur played a central role in the attack on the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, (which killed more than three hundred people including 241 US soldiers) it is impossible for the United States to object.
Tehran: The audacious strike on Haniyah in Tehran is part of Netanyahu’s goal of decapitating Hamas’s leadership. More importantly, it clearly establishes, following Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel and Israel’s counterstrike inside Iran, the new normal of direct strikes between Israel and Iran. Iran’s failure to prevent this will rightfully terrify the regime, but also force it to respond in some way. That said, the statement from the Iranian United Nations mission that it will respond with special operations suggests that we will not see a missile attack on Israel as we did in April. The strike also exposes Netanyahu’s willingness to forge ahead with his main goal—deterring Iran—even at the expense of a hostage-ceasefire deal, Washington’s key objective as a first step toward its broader goals in the region.
—Beth Sanner is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project advisory committee and a former US deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration.
Haniyeh’s death will not change Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel
Israel’s strike on Haniyeh is a strategic gamble. While many Israelis will take grim satisfaction at the death of a leader of the group that organized the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and started a war that has killed almost 40,000 Gazans, previous attacks on Hamas’s top leadership like Ahmed Yassin in 2004 have not changed Hamas’s intent to destroy the state of Israel. The strike will almost certainly derail ceasefire-for-hostages talks for weeks, at best, so the short-term consequences could be considerable.
The medium-term consequences for how the war ends are likely smaller, however. Israel is determined that Hamas not have a role in postwar governance in Gaza, and Hamas has been angling for a role that preserves its ability to rebuild itself militarily into a Hezbollah-like military power without the burden of civil governance. Hamas’s military leaders are more important to the group’s strategy than its exiled political leadership like Haniyeh.
—Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council. He served in the Department of State from 1997-2007 and as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2008 to 2019.
Even if the current escalation stops here, the next one is around the corner
The recent assassinations of Shukur (Hajj Mahsan) in Beirut and Haniyeh in Tehran might lead to a strong reaction from Iran and especially Hezbollah, which likely see these assassinations as crossing all red lines by Israel and in complete contradiction to the rules of the game between Israel and the Axis of Resistance.
These reactions may drive the parties, despite their reluctance, into a regional war in light of the desire of Iran and Hezbollah to restore the deterrence equation vis-à-vis Israel and to prevent similar acts from It in the future.
Israel’s ability to thwart the expected attacks by the axis elements, along with Israel’s relatively measured response to these reactions, may lead to the containment of the current event. It is still important to remember that without a ceasefire in Gaza, even if the current escalation is prevented, the next escalation is around the corner. Very tense days lie ahead.
—Danny Citrinowicz is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project working group. He previously served for twenty-five years in a variety of command positions units in Israel Defense Intelligence.
The difference between these strikes and Israel’s Iran strike in April
Yesterday, Israel launched lethal strikes against Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, following his attendance of Iran’s presidential inauguration, and Shukur, architect of the 1983 bombings of the US Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 US servicemembers and French barracks that killed fifty-eight French servicemembers. The strikes served several purposes: decapitating Hamas and Hezbollah leadership as well as making it clear that Israel will find and eliminate its enemies anywhere in the world, including in nonpermissive environments such as Iran. The strikes likely eliminated a false sense of security for leaders in the Iran threat network of proxy forces and were also meant to reestablish deterrence against attacking Israel. The strikes also were a response to a recent Hezbollah attack that targeted a soccer field in northern Israel and killed twelve Israeli children and adolescents.
While still measured, Israel’s strikes were stronger than the retaliatory strike Israel launched against Iran in April, which had followed Iran’s failed attack on Israel involving several hundred one-way attack drones and missiles. At that time, Israel chose to respond in a way that communicated that Israel was capable of evading Iranian defenses and striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel did so through a missile strike at a single site in Isfahan, home of Iran’s nuclear program, that didn’t cause significant damage but made it clear that Israel could do so if and when it wants. While the April strike was more symbolic and meant to convey a deterrence message, the strikes in the last two days decapitated senior leaders in the threat network attacking Israel.
—Alex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ N7 Initiative and former chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
The attacks reveal—yet again—the Islamic Republic’s intelligence weaknesses
In Karaj, a city west of Tehran, two boxes of pastries were placed on a street corner with signs saying these were sweets to celebrate the news of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran. For anti-regime Iranians, inside Iran and in the diaspora, this news was much welcomed because of the Islamic Republic’s material and financial backing of Hamas. For years, Iranians have been honing in on the reality that the people’s money is being spent on proxies abroad, as noted in the popular chant, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, our lives for Iran.”
Haniyeh’s assassination, presumably by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, was yet another major blow to the intelligence apparatuses of the Islamic Republic, which have repeatedly failed to prevent sabotage, assassinations, and cyber attacks on Iranian soil. In 2022, IRGC intelligence chief Hossein Taeb was sacked, in part because he failed to thwart those very events during his ten-year tenure. Some officials have pointed to the fact that the intelligence apparatuses have invested too much in domestic “threats,” in other words suppressing civil society and arresting and imprisoning dissidents.
While Haniyeh was technically the second member of a terrorist organization killed in Iran by Mossad—the first being Abu Muhammad al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s second-highest leader, in 2020—the fact that this happened while on a visit for Pezeshkian’s inauguration sends a big message about Israel’s ability to infiltrate Iran at a moment of its choosing, even if that moment is during heightened security for more than one hundred foreign delegations.
—Holly Dagres is editor of the Atlantic Council’s IranSource and MENASource blogs, and a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs. She also curates The Iranist newsletter.
Dark clouds now hang over Beirut
I left Lebanon less than a week ago—it was brimming with life as it always does during summertime, with an airport bustling with tourists and restaurants filled with long-awaited expats family reunions, bringing a light of hope during these somber times. Yet, since yesterday, and for the first time since the region’s conflict, serious anguish has started to fill the air of Beirut.
In the aftermath Israel’s assassination of Shukur in Hezbollah’s heartland, Haret Hreik, on Tuesday, Lebanon has maintained its official position of not wanting war with Israel by calling for the full implementation of UN Resolution 1701, which it reiterated in a letter of concern to the UN Security Council. Despite asking to give peace a chance, the country’s caretaker foreign minister also announced that “there’s going to be retaliation,” which he said he hoped would not be met by an Israeli response. With a quasi-functioning Lebanese government under Hezbollah’s influence over military, political, and security institutions, these contradictory statements do little more than reveal the government’s frailty.
Ultimately, the intensity, timing, and nature of this declared retaliation remains at the discretion of Iran and under the execution of Hezbollah. Lebanese opinion about such a decision seems divided between those who support Hezbollah’s rhetoric and those who want to avoid any escalatory action that could take the country back to 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a destructive thirty-four-day war.
Following Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, Iran’s supreme leader gave an order to strike Israel directly, a statement which, in the eyes of many, gives the green light for its Lebanese proxy to execute a direct response.
Hezbollah’s response will be critical for its leadership to maintain credibility in light of its repeated pledge to respond to any Israeli aggression on Lebanon. Still, such a response will need to be carefully calibrated. A direct response by Hezbollah that, for example, hits important Israeli military sites might lead to an all-out war, which the group has been trying to avoid, despite its repeated claims of being ready for such a scenario.
Alternatively, Hezbollah could aim for a more diluted attack that might avenge the killing of Shukur while also containing further escalation. But such a response threatens to undermine the group’s deterrence strategy; after all, this isn’t the first time Hezbollah is being cornered to respond to an Israeli political assassination of a high-level target on Lebanese soil. Earlier in January, the group retaliated against the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut by firing rockets into Israel, and since then, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed that “any assassination on Lebanese territory targeting a Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian, or Syrian . . . [would] be met with a strong reaction.” Cognizant of this dilemma, Hezbollah is tactically limited.
The international community may very well get additional clarity on what Hezbollah’s response will entail during Nasrallah’s speech Thursday at Shukur’s funeral. In the meantime, amid growing fears of what looms ahead, Beirut International Airport has started to grapple with frantic travelers again; yet this time, facing delayed or canceled flights as they try to return back.
—Nour Dabboussi is the assistant director to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.
Further reading
Wed, Jul 31, 2024
Will the killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders lead to a wider war?
Fast Thinking By
The recent killings of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Fouad Shukur, both reportedly by Israel, raise new questions about what’s next for the region. Atlantic Council experts share their answers.
Fri, Apr 19, 2024
Are Israel and Iran stepping back from the brink?
Fast Thinking By
With an all-out war hanging in the balance, will these two foes now stand down? Our experts are here to interpret the signals.
Sun, Apr 14, 2024
Iran is trying to create a new normal with its attack. Here’s how Israel and the US should respond.
New Atlanticist By William F. Wechsler
Tehran is trying to set a precedent that it can attack Israel directly, that it can do so from Iranian soil, and that it can target civilians inside Israel.
Image: A Palestinian carries a picture of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Iran, during a march to condemn his killing, at Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon July 31, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir