‘Ants in the legs’: Iran may retaliate for Hamas leader’s assassination, but scale of retaliation unclear, expert says

As Middle Eastern and US leaders await Iran’s response to Israel’s assassination Wednesday of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, an expert on the situation said it could mean all-out war in the volatile region or lead to a quick resolution of the Gaza conflict.

Israel faces retaliation not only from Iran but also from Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israeli forces killed Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr on Tuesday in a precision missile strike in Beirut similar to the one that took out Haniyeh, said retired Marine Col. Stephen Ganyard, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state.

Ganyard said the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh and Shukr could lead to an “all-out” war in the region or could be part of a larger plan by Israel to escalate tensions with Hezbollah and Iran to the point where they decide to settle the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“There’s an old Russian, even Soviet, strategy called ‘escalate to de-escalate,’” said Ganyard, an ABC News contributor. “What the Israelis seem to be doing here is accelerating things very quickly, perhaps to restart talks with Hamas and Gaza, to calm Hezbollah down, and to make Iran understand that it will actually be a target in the future if its attacks continue, and that its proxies are very vulnerable to Israeli attacks.”

Haniyeh was killed Wednesday when a long-range missile fired by an Israeli plane struck a guesthouse in Tehran where Haniyeh was staying while attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian officials said.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for “revenge.”

Ganyard said a number of elements needed to come together to make the strike possible.

“What’s interesting about all this is that they [Israel] “You had to have intelligence to know exactly what room that leader was in and then they had to have the precision to hit just that room. And they have these long-range weapons that have the ability to pick out individual windows if necessary,” Ganyard said.

He said Israel likely chose Tehran to kill Haniyeh because it has an “incredible amount of intelligence on the ground there.”

Ganyard said Haniyeh’s assassination was a disgrace to Iran.

“Is Iran now going to go to war over a Hamas leader killed on its soil? There is at least some hope that it will not,” Ganyard said. “It will have to retaliate in some way because it is obviously humiliated by Israel’s ability to eliminate a leader on its own soil.”

He said the real challenge for Iran was how far it would go, because Haniyeh was not “one of its men,” noting that Hamas is a Sunni organization and Iran’s leaders are Shiites.

“So are you really going to start an all-out war against Israel on the basis of a member of one of your proxies, but not even a coreligionist? [person]” said Ganyard.

Iran’s response could be similar to the one it used against Israel in April, when the latter launched 300 drones and missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven people, including a senior Iranian commander. Israel has said that 99% of the drones and missiles fired by Iran were intercepted by the country’s “Iron Dome” defense system.

“The response in April was pretty muted. They said, ‘OK, you got your revenge. It didn’t do anything to us. Let’s stop it, at least calm the tensions,’” Ganyard said. “So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens. How far will Iran retaliate? What does ‘revenge’ really mean? How far are they willing to go without going to open war with the Israelis?”

Ganyard believes that the greatest threat to Israel is Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Hezbollah has 150,000 to 200,000 surface-to-surface missiles that they can attack Israel with, some of which are precision weapons, which means that all of Israel’s infrastructure is at risk,” Ganyard said. “So the threat from the north, Hezbollah, is really what’s going to concern Israel and what’s going to be Hezbollah’s response. Is Hezbollah prepared to start this war?”

Israeli authorities said they arrested Shukr, Hezbollah’s military commander in Beirut, on suspicion of being responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 people, mostly children, on Saturday. Shukr was also wanted for a 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 300 American and French soldiers.

Ganyard said the alleged Hezbollah attack on the Golan Heights had pushed the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah “over the red line.” Hezbollah has denied any involvement in Saturday’s attack on the Golan Heights.

“How far this goes from here will really be a question for Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership,” Ganyard said.