Hamas has already pledged to take revenge after the Palestinian militant group’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.
The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh "clearly had the support and foreknowledge of the United States and the United Kingdom," retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson insisted in an interview with Sputnik.
"I say that because we also have news reports now coming in that the US and UK warships are headed into the Mediterranean. On one of the US ships is probably a Marine Expeditionary Unit," Johnson said.
So the situation "has now escalated tensions in the region beyond what they were, even after the attack on the Iranian consul in April in Beirut," according to him.
Responding to that attack, Iran "sent a very clear message to Israel that in the future, any further provocations like this would be met with force, and now both Hezbollah and Iran have been incited to respond and Israel is calculating that it can withstand the blows," the former CIA intelligence officer added.
"This is extremely dangerous. […] This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don't think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah. I think that this may in fact have been crossing a red line. It is extremely worrisome because this has the hallmarks of being able to spin out of control. And it is, we're now in a situation of wait and see," Johnson stressed.
The remarks come after the Palestinian militant group Hamas confirmed in a statement that Haniyeh was killed in what Hamas said was an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran after he attended the inauguration of the new Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Haniyeh "passed as a result of a treacherous Zionist raid," Hamas insisted, while the movement’s politburo member Mousa Abu Marzook condemned the assassination as a "cowardly action" that he warned would not go unanswered.
Who Was Ismail Haniyeh?
Hamas has confirmed the death of its politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, which was killed in what the Palestinian militant group said was an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Haniyeh was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City in 1962, joining Hamas in the late 1980s during the First Intifada, or uprising.
The 62-year-old served as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority between 2006 and 2007, after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections at the time.
After the establishment of a Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip, as a result of Hamas’ spat with rival Fatah faction, Haniyeh served as the leader of the de facto government in Gaza in 2007-2014.
Haniyeh left Gaza in December 2019, living in Turkiye and Qatar, and building up his authority to represent Hamas abroad.
His most notable previous visits included the funeral of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020, and the inauguration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021.
In April of this year, Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren, with Haniyeh making clear at the time that their deaths would not affect the ceasefire, and the hostage talks that were under way back then.
No comments:
Post a Comment