On Tuesday night Israeli fighter jets carried out an “airstrike” in Tehran and assassinated the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguards.
This comes three months after Haniyeh’s sons were killed by the Israelis in an airstrike inside the Gaza Strip.
Hours prior to the assassination Haniyeh attend the inauguration of the new Iranian President with the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In a statement Hamas said that Haniyeh was assassinated in an “airstrike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of Iran’s new President.”
The assassination of Haniyeh has now brought the Middle East on a knife edge of all out war, according to Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Georgetown University.
Hashemi told the BBC, “This is a major development. I think it also impacts events in Lebanon because just a few hours earlier Israel tried to assassinate a senior Hezbollah leader in southern Beirut and the working assumption was that Iran and Hezbollah were not interested in escalation.
He then warned, “Now Iran has every incentive to try and escalate this conflict.”
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