Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was eliminated at his residence in Tehran. A statement by the IRGC’s Public Relations Department said the attack was carried out early Wednesday.
Al-Mayadeen, a news outlet affiliated with Hezbollah, said the Hamas leader was assassinated with a “missile fired from abroad,” citing an unnamed Iranian official. The official called it an act of “aggression against Iran” which “necessitates a decisive response.”
Interestingly, Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, had tweeted, “The Israeli Air Force is about to demonstrate its range tonight,” hours before Haniyeh’s assassination.
Goldberg later tweeted, If you can hit a radar next to a nuclear site, you can hit a house in Tehran too. The ayatollah has no clothes.
The Israeli Air Force is about to demonstrate its range tonight.
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) July 30, 2024
The Israeli military refused to comment on the report of the demise of Ismail Haniyeh. The IDF told CNN that it “does not comment on reports in foreign media.”
As EurAsian Times reported earlier, the Israel Air Force (IAF) recently executed a long-range mission against the Houthi militia using Israel’s F-35 stealth fighters 1700 km away.
Israel launched a retaliatory attack against the Houthi militia. The strikes were conducted against Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah. The F-35 stealth fighters were tasked with the operation to strike the Houthis. Analysts emphasized that the operation was significant as the target struck was 1,700 kilometers from Israel and called it an indirect warning to Iran.
The F-35s traveled 1,700 kilometers during the daring operations, while Iran is located approximately 1,500 kilometers from Israel. You can read the full story here.
The Rise Of Donald Trump Is Bad News For Iran?
Donald Trump’s popularity graph is on the rise. But Biden will not withdraw despite pressures from his party men on health grounds. The recent assassination attempt on Trump and his miraculous escape could boost his popularity with American voters. But that is not a dependable inference if we cast a glance at the history of presidential assassinations in the US.
Tehran think tanks feel Trump will emerge victorious. As his hostility against Iran is well-known, the theocratic regime in Tehran seems to be gripped by Trumpophobia.
Iranian political circles and media both are seriously discussing the content and dimension of the Trump administration and the ways and means of countering its impact. It needs to be remembered that today’s global strategy is different from what it was when Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement.
The commandos have gunned down the 20-year-old youth who had tried on Tramp’s life in an election rally. Therefore, the real story of the conspiracy or no conspiracy of this heinous crime may never be disclosed. A lot of speculation is expected as days pass by and Trump inches stewards his election history.
Why Hostility
Iran carries the baggage of hostilities against the US from the days of the Iranian oil nationalization movement of the early 1950s led by the then-leftist leader Mosaddegh.
The CIA scuttled the movement and thus won the ineradicable hostility of the Iranian nation. When Iranians took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, they held 52 Americans hostage for over 444 days. On this day in 1981, the hostage crisis ended, but that wasn’t the end of the story – or the suffering – for the hostages and their families.
The hostage crisis began when Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy, furious that the U.S. had given the deposed shah of Iran medical sanctuary. In those frantic moments before the embassy fell, Consul General Richard Morefield helped five Americans escape. They ended up in the Canadian embassy. Their escape from Iran was portrayed in 2012’s Argo news outlet.
The question: why is Iran nursing hostility against Trump? Aljazeera on 5 January 2021 reported that US President Donald Trump has had a “red notice “request for his arrest issued through Interpol by Iran. Iranian judiciary spokesman had said that Iran had requested the International Police organization to arrest Trump and 47 other American officials identified as playing a role in the assassination of top general Qassim Soleimani in 2020. Soleimani, Iran’s top general who led the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was assassinated on January 3. 2020, in a US drone strike in Baghdad ordered by Trump.
Then came the Iranian nuclear issue. The US has been opposing Iran’s nuclearization from the very beginning. There is the element of Israel. Iran has pledged to destroy Israel and thus fulfill the Islamic religious obligation.
The Jewish members of the American Congress wield great influence in American politics. The American administration is usually under strong pressure from its Jewish lobby to deter Iran from making the bomb. Iran always had a double-speak about its nuclear program. It said that it wanted nuclear capability for peaceful purposes, and at the same time, it admitted that it was working to decimate Israel.
The Iran nuclear deal, generally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed on July 15, 2015, between Iran and G-5. Iran agreed to stop attaining nuclear capability in return for lifting the sanctions, which would have released billions of dollars for her. But on May 8, 2018. President Trump announced the withdrawal of the US from the deal.
He said, “We cannot prevent an Iranian bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current government. Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal, “was reported by Vox on May 8, 2018.
In a joint statement responding to the U.S. withdrawal, the leaders of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom stated that the United Nations Security Council’s resolution endorsing the nuclear deal remained the “binding international legal framework for the resolution of the dispute.” This showed a complete divergence of opinion of the three permanent members of the Security Council and the US.
Arrest Warrants
In January 2021, Al Jazeera reported that an Iranian judiciary spokesman announced during a press conference that Iran had requested the international police organization to arrest Trump and 47 other American officials identified as playing a role in the assassination of top General Qassim Soleimani last year.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime. France rejected the warrant, saying it was not compatible with any international law. Not only in Iran but in Iraq also, Al-Mohandis, the deputy leader of the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Force, an umbrella group composed of an array of militias, including the Iran-backed groups formed to fight the Islamic State group.
Soleimani headed the expeditionary Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The arrest warrant was for a charge of premeditated murder, which carries the death penalty on conviction.
After these events and particularly after the killing of Qasim Soleimani, Iranian proxies intensified attacks on American interests. Iran moved closer to China, and with Russia, she had already mended the fence.
Iran’s hostile stance towards Israel is nothing new. However, its confrontation with American interests is important to the peace and tranquillity of the region. Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen have undertaken the crusade of attacking even mercantile vessels in the Red Sea, which is the premier connecting route for commercial as well as naval ships to reach the Mediterranean and Europe.
However, in the absence of any tangible proof, there is no justification to accuse Iran of conspiring the assassination of Trump, notwithstanding how deep their hostility is.
Two important points that Trump had said catalyzed him to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal. First, the deal did not take cognizance of the ballistic missiles that Iran was pursuing to achieve, and second, the deal did not carry any condition for Iran to close the shop of armed proxies spread over the Middle East.
These two objections remain in place, and even if Trump succeeds in assuming the American presidency, we don’t think there will be a thaw in Iran-American strained relations.
- Prof. KN Pandita (Padma Shri) is the former director of the Center of Central Asian Studies at Kashmir University.
- This article contains the author’s personal views and does not represent EurAsian Times’ policies/views/opinions in any way.
- The author can be reached at knp627 (at) gmail.com
