Haniyeh’s Killing a Sign of Iranian Weakness

It has been nearly three weeks since Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’ “political wing,” was killed in his room at a heavily-guarded guesthouse in Tehran, when a bomb planted two months before exploded. While Israel has remained silent on the matter, this feat is widely ascribed to the Mossad. Iran has threatened a terrible revenge, but it may be trying to find an excuse not to follow through, because Tehran understands that any attack on Israel would provoke a devastating counterattack, almost certainly including the destruction of Kharg Island’s oil terminals, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, bringing Iran’s economy, already suffering, to its knees. Iran has said that if a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza can be established, it will no longer feel compelled to attack Israel. Despite the braggadocio of its leaders, Iran knows that in any major conflict with Israel, it will lose, and disastrously. The likely damage to its economy would push the Iranians into even deeper distress, perhaps leading to an uprising against the regime that has ever since 1979 has brought them a world of woe. More on Iran’s weakness can be found here: “Iran is weaker than we think. It’s time to take advantage.” By Saeed Ghasseminejad and Richard Goldberg, The Hill, August 14, 2024:

The Islamic Republic of Iran is weak and vulnerable, far more than the regime would have us believe.

That’s the biggest takeaway from last week’s suspected Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran — and it delivers important messages to the ayatollah, his terror proxies, the Iranian people and Washington policymakers.

Haniyeh’s killing while under maximum protection by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tells Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, that Israel has deeply infiltrated the ayatollah’s intelligence and security establishment. Furthermore, unlike in previous years, Israel is now prepared to use its power to strike the Islamic Republic at the highest levels within Iran.

In recent years, Israel has conducted several covert operations in Iran, the most significant being the 2020 elimination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the godfather of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program.

But the elimination of Haniyeh, both in terms of his political position and the operation’s complexity, which required planning in a very short time, indicates the extraordinary level of Israel’s infiltration inside the regime and its increased resolve to target its enemies — even if such strikes come with the risk of strong retaliation….

The Iranian government must be wondering what other targets Israel may be able to strike at, given its ability to breach the security around Haniyeh. Will it resume assassinating Iran’s top nuclear scientists, the way it did in the past, when five of them were killed? Or could the Mossad, with its Iranian collaborators, somehow manage to cause explosions inside the underground nuclear facilities at Fordow?

Yahya Sinwar has been slithering from one underground tunnel in Gaza to another for the past ten months. He knows that many hundreds of those tunnels have been blown up, and the IDF noose is tightening. He’s a dead man walking. As for the braggart warrior, and leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, he has for many years been terrified of being killed by the IDF; he almost never appears in public, and has said that he moves every few days, saying that “even I don’t know where I will be sleeping tonight.” Haniyeh’s death reminds those leaders of Iran’s proxies that Israel is able to strike at the highest officials, and that now Israel’s gloves are off.

The killing of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s second-in-command, after a airstrike on the apartment he was living in, smack in the middle of the Shi’a group’s stronghold in south Beirut, shows that no one, including Nasrallah himself, is safe from the IDF and Mossad.

The Iranian regime is widely unpopular, and every atrocity it commits — like the recent shooting of Arezou Badri, a 31-year-old woman, by Iran’s police on July 22 for allegedly violating mandatory hijab laws, leaving her a paraplegic — deepens the popular rage.

According to David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, and the world’s foremost expert on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran is now “within weeks” of being able to produce a nuclear bomb. Given this information, what does Washington intend to do about it? Will the Bidenites leave it up to Israel, now fighting a seven-front war, to stop Iran’s nuclear program before that breakout can occur? Or will it assume its responsibilities as the world’s greatest military power and do the job itself? What if a fleet of American planes were to drop bunker-buster bombs, which Israel does not now possess, on Fordow? There is nothing Iran could do to the United States in response.

The Haniyeh assassination is a window for the U.S. to seize. This is not a time for restraint or de-escalation. This is a moment to maximize pressure on Khamenei, increase support for the Iranian people and improve the odds that the Islamic Republic crumbles into the ash heap of history.

What would “maximizing pressure” look like? Putting back the sanctions on Iran that the Biden administration has so foolishly removed. Freezing the assets of all Iranians connected to the regime that have not yet been frozen. Doing the same with the assets of non-Iranians helping the regime. Moving nuclear-powered submarines into the Persian Gulf, positioned right off the Iranian coast, near Kharg Island, as a permanent threat. Publicizing, on social media and at every international forum including the UN, the violent attacks by the Iranian police on women who appear in public with “wrongly” tied hijabs or without hijabs. Stepping up anti-regime broadcasts funded by the American government. Supplying weapons to the Baluchi separatists in eastern Iran. Encouraging Azerbaijan to help separatist Azeris in Iran obtain weapons and money. That’s a start.