On the morning of July 30, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, was in Tehran for the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new president, where legislators could be heard shouting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” These are the last known images of Haniyeh. A short time later, the leader of one of the world’s largest terror groups was assassinated.
Israel didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the killing, which, according to Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer, isn’t surprising.
“Let’s assume Israel is the one behind it,” Melamed, now an author and educator, said. “Obviously, I mean, carrying out something like that indicates a lot of a very advanced capacities are in terms of intelligence, in terms of accuracy, in terms of level of operational coordination that it requires.”
“There are obviously many, many different moving parts that when you do something like that,” Melamed said. “So again, I don’t want to say term victory. I would say this is a significant expression of might that resonants and echoes across the region if you would like to put it this way.”
Haniyeh was killed less than 24 hours after another Iranian-backed terror leader was killed in Beirut. Fuad Shukr was Hezbollah’s top military commander in Lebanon, second only to the group’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The U.S. government put a $5 million bounty on Shukr for his role in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks that killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three army soldiers.
According to Melamed, Shukr represented a focal center of knowledge.
“Meaning a person that in the context of the organization is a very significant component because the knowledge, the experience, the capacities, the skills, and so on,” he said.
In an interview with Straight Arrow News Melamed said the same applies to Hamas and Haniyeh from an organizational perspective.
“We have to remember that Hamas, other than its militant capacities and operation, is a political movement, ideological movement, and also a multibillion-dollar organization that runs businesses across the world,” he said.
According to Melamed, the removal of Haniyeh will have an “immediate ripple effect inside the organization.”
“We have to remember that Hamas, other than its militant capacities and operation, is a political movement, ideological movement, and also a multibillion-dollar organization that runs businesses across the world.”
Avi Melamed, Former Israeli Intelligence Officer
Melamed said the timing of the two strikes is also significant and sends a clear message to Iran that Israel is ready to set the pace now.
“Because up until now, the Mullah regime basically was the one that was distributing the cards, sort of speaking,” he said. “I think that’s basically a message from Israel to Iran. It actually says we are now shuffling the cards.”
As far as what sort of response to expect from Iran, Melamed said the Iranian regime losing two of its top commanders in two different terror proxies in less than a day is embarrassing for Iran, and to keep the support and loyalty of its Axis of Resistance, the regime needs to retaliate.
Melamed said Iran knows it can’t win a head-on fight against Israel and the West, so “the bottom line is that currently, the Iranian regime is facing this double-double dilemma. How exactly to retaliate on both events in a way that in the end of the day, will not cause a dynamic that leads to a significant escalation to the point it will turn on to the whole route war. But we definitely should expect retaliation.”
