Iranians attend the funeral procession of assassinated Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 1, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran’s plan to attack Israel in retaliation for the recent killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran will not be affected by ongoing discussions to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, the Iranian foreign ministry said on Monday.
“Iran’s support for the necessity of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and stopping the Zionist regime’s [Israel’s] onslaught against the Palestinian people has no direct connection with Iran’s legitimate right and punishing the aggressor and responding to the aggression,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters during a press conference. “These two issues are two separate matters and are not directly related to each other.”
Haniyeh, the exiled political chief of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, was killed in an explosion in Iran’s capital city on July 31. Iran has accused Israel of carrying out the assassination and vowed revenge, which, according to experts and Western officials, will likely take the form of a direct strike on the Jewish state. The Israeli government has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.
Iran is the chief international sponsor of Hamas, providing the terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training.
It is unclear when Iran will take action against Israel. On Tuesday, the spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an Iranian military force and internationally designated terrorist organization, revealed there could be a long wait.
“Time is in our favor, and the waiting period for this response could be long,” Alimohammad Naini said, according to Reuters, which cited Iranian state media. Naini added that “the enemy” should wait for a calculated response.
Reuters reported last week, citing three anonymous “senior Iranian officials,” that only a ceasefire deal in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign for the past 10 months against Palestinian terrorists, would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel.
However, Iran has signaled it will attack Israel in the coming days regardless of the outcome of the ceasefire talks.
“As the Islamic Republic of Iran, we insist on our legal and indisputable right to punish the aggressor,” Kanaani said on Monday. “We have also told our friends that we do not seek to escalate tensions in the region, and we support efforts with good faith. On the other hand, we emphasize Iran’s inherent right to assert its rights and punish the aggressor, and we will use it at the appropriate time.”
Negotiations brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to reach a ceasefire deal to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza continued this week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed for progress toward a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal as he visited Egypt on Tuesday. He flew to Egypt from Tel Aviv, where he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a US “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides. He urged Hamas also to accept the proposal as the basis for more talks.
Hamas has not explicitly rejected the current proposal but indicated it likely won’t accept it. The terrorist group rejected US comments that it was backing away from a deal, saying it was still committed to terms it agreed with mediators last month based on a US proposal from May and blaming Netanyahu for obstructing an agreement with new demands.
Netanyahu has said any hostage-truce deal must include measures to ensure Israel’s security needs, such as mechanisms to prevent a return of armed Hamas gunmen to northern Gaza, which borders southern Israel.
Hamas launched the war with its invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped some 250 hostages while committing mass atrocities, including widespread sexual violence.
Israel repelled the surprise invasion and responded with weeks of airstrikes before launching a ground offensive in neighboring Gaza on Oct. 27. According to Israeli leaders, the main goals of the ongoing military campaign in the enclave are to free the hostages and dismantle Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.
Hamas leaders have vowed to carry out attacks on Israel similar to the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.”
The conflict has raised fears around the world that the fighting could spread and engulf the Middle East in a regional war.
Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, has pummeled northern Israeli communities almost daily with barrages of drones, rockets, and missiles since the start of the Gaza conflict in October.
About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate Israel’s north during that time due to the unrelenting attacks. Most of them have spent the past 10 months living in hotels in other areas of Israel.
Hezbollah has also said it will attack Israel in retaliation for the killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon late last month. Israel claimed responsibility for Shukr’s death.
According to reports, the expected Iranian and Hezbollah response will likely be larger than Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israeli soil in April. In that attack, Iran fired some 300 missiles and drones at Israel, nearly all of which were downed by the Jewish state and its allies.
Despite the failure of the April strike, Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, the nominee to serve as Iran’s next defense minister, hailed it as a success while addressing the Iranian parliament on Monday.
“After [Iran’s] proud operation of True Promise, the US has begun to strengthen the weakened deterrence of the infamous Zionist regime [Israel],” Nasirzadeh said, stressing the need of the Islamist regime to ramp up weapons production to boost its own deterrence.
Nasirzadeh also claimed that the world has rejected a US-led world order and is seeking to form a new system with new powers emerging, according to Iranian media.
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