A dance of death

A six-year-old and a ten-year-old were also killed in what the Israeli military called an “intelligence-based elimination”. Miscalculations are mounting, and retaliations are crossing what were previously understood as “red lines.” 

The Iranian UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani also blamed Israel for the assassination of Shukur as well as Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on  July 31. Haniyeh is the most senior Hamas leader to be killed since the October 7 attacks. He had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian and was being hosted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

His assassination is heavily embarrassing for Iran and sends a clear message to its leadership that no-one there is beyond Israel’s reach. Pezeshkian said Iran will “defend its territorial integrity, dignity, honour, and pride, and will make the terrorist occupiers regret their cowardly act”. 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that avenging Haniyeh’s assassination is “Tehran’s duty” and has threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel. Pezeshkian claims the strikes “suggest an intention to escalate conflict and expand the war through the entire region.” At a news conference in Tel Aviv on July 31, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel is “fighting the evil axis of Iran”, a fight which is a “war of existence” for Israel.

As I have previously highlighted in the New European, over even a relatively short timeline, miscalculations are a “when” not an “if” and an escalation in the north with Iran either through its proxies or directly, leading to a wider regional conflict, has been the greatest fear of leaders in both Washington and Tel Aviv. That fear is growing. 

The UK government has now joined a host of others in advising against all travel to Lebanon. Australia has advised all its citizens to leave, and a number of airlines have started to cancel flights. The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, and defence secretary, John Healey, have travelled to Qatar to help drive efforts to reach a ceasefire as well as calling for de-escalation across the wider region. This is the first major foreign policy challenge for this new team.

Labour has already lost support from sections of the public and its own MPs for its support of Israeli’s post-October 7 actions. Further escalations could create further headaches for the new Starmer government.  

Over the coming days, Hezbollah will likely attempt to launch rockets or drones against high-profile military assets in northern Israel. Possible targets include Haifa naval base Ramat David airbase which houses F-16 fighter jet squadrons and other military installations in the border area. Hezbollah also has the capability to target Tel Aviv with greater scale, accuracy and firepower than Hamas. 

Uncertainty remains, however, on how Iran will react. Over many decades, both Israel and Iran have learned the steps for the delicate dance of escalation, that balance face-saving with your own population whilst sending careful messages of both deterrence and reassurance to each other. The two sides may now be dancing to different beats and in the noisy confusion, no-one is sure what move the other may make next.  

A direct strike by Iran would likely be similar to what the Iranians called Operation True Promise in April when the IRGC, in collaboration with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Hezbollah, and the Yemeni Houthis, launched attacks against Israel with loitering munitions, and cruise and ballistic missiles. Any new strike would likely be similarly limited in scale to Operation True Promise and give Israel and allies similar time to respond. 

It is unlikely Iran (or Lebanon) wants a full-blown military conflict. A slightly more likely scenario will see Iran targeting Israeli interests in the wider region and relying on regional proxies, such as the Houthis and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, to launch drones and missiles towards Israel. Netanyahu claims Israel is prepared for all scenarios. In such a dynamic and unprecedented situation, all scenarios are possible. 

On the ground in Gaza, there is likely to be less of an immediate impact despite the killing of such a senior Hamas figure.  Hamas military commander, Yahya Sinwar, is still at large. 

Haniyeh was responsible for developing Hamas’ fighting capacity but had moved away from an operational role to a more political one. He was a key interlocutor between Hamas and Iran and this relationship was significant in developing Hamas’s capacity, but he had spent recent months moving around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal that would include a hostage exchange, in which hostages would be exchanged for Palestinians in Israeli jails.

His death decreases the likelihood of any hostage deal and increases the risk of harm to the remaining 115 hostages as the situation escalates. Netanyahu remains under a severe amount of pressure to bring the hostages home, and whilst he is celebrating the scalp of Haniyeh he has likely made this task significantly more challenging. 

Netanyahu’s government’s grip on power is increasingly tenuous. Last Monday, far right protesters, backed by prominent far-right lawmakers from his ruling coalition stormed two army bases after the military police detained nine soldiers as part of an investigation into the alleged “serious abuse” of a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman prison camp in scenes described by the chief of the Israeli Defence Force as “bordering on anarchy.” 

Over the last few months protests against Netanyahu’s government, that had been a regular event before October 7 but had halted during a period of unity and national coming together in grief and then anger, have resumed and have been growing in size. 

The Greek historian, Herodotus, established the study of history in the 5^th century BC with The Histories: an entertaining if, in places not strictly accurate, account of the rise of the Persian empire and the Greco-Persian wars. In it, he warns that “Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.” 

Netanyahu may prefer to take the region over the precipice to hold his coalition together and unite the people of Israel against common external enemies in a fight for their existence. 

In The Histories, Herodotus tells of the wealthy King Croesus of Lydia (modern-day Turkey), who after extending his empire consulted the oracle of Delphi on whether he should next attack the Persian king Cyrus the Great. He was told that he would “destroy a great empire” should he do so. Not realising that this would be his own empire, he invades. 

As a defeated Croesus is placed on a pyre to be burnt to death, Cyrus asks him why he attacked Persia. Croesus blames it on the gods claiming, “After all, no one is foolish enough to prefer war to peace; in peace, sons bury their fathers and in war, fathers bury their sons.” 

Haniyeh had already buried three of his sons before he was killed this week. Parents have buried children in Golan and Beirut in recent days. Time and again since Herodotus, we have proved that many of those that rule us are foolish enough to prefer war to peace. 

Croesus’s fate after the Persian conquest of Lydia is uncertain. The unreliable Herodotus claims after hearing his prayers, Apollo sent rain to extinguish the fire and Cyrus kept him on as an adviser. 

Uncertainty reigns across the region today. It may take divine intervention to extinguish the fires that have been lit. 

Andy Owen is a former British military intelligence officer