The threat of an all-out regional inferno hangs over the Middle East

In assassinating Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukur, within hours of each other this week, Israel has unprecedentedly raised the spectre of a regional war.

Israel has once more daringly challenged its arch enemies, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to retaliate. The potential for a regional inferno with major powers’ involvement has never been higher.

Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The killing of Haniyeh and Shukur fulfil several objectives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It tallies with his aim to hunt Hamas leaders wherever they are, to cripple Hezbollah as a threat to Israel, and to signal powerfully to Tehran’s leaders that it can reach wherever and whatever it wants in Iran.

For months now, Netanyahu has viewed a war with Iran as a potent means to camouflage his failure to eradicate Hamas (whose military leader, Yahya Sinwar, remains in charge of the resistance), and secure the release of Israeli hostages 10 months into his military’s scorched-earth operations in Gaza. Such a war would also, in his mind, deflect widespread opposition at home and abroad. Additionally, Netanyahu has sought to oblige the United States – Israel’s key security guarantor – to instrumentally participate in a war that Israel cannot win on its own.

Israel knows it is no longer a dominant power in the region. Its vulnerability was first tested by Hamas’ October 7 offensives and subsequent resilience and Hezbollah’s cross-border firing, with its flailing dominance in the region tested again in April during Iran’s direct missile and drone attacks in response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus. Though most of the Iranian projectiles were shot down, it was US, British, French and Jordanian forces that oversaw the successful interceptions.

The US shares Israel’s opposition to the threat of an Iranian-led “axis of resistance”, of which Hezbollah is the most powerful sub-national militant force in the world, and has committed itself to defend Israel in the event of an all-out war. Even so, it is fully cognisant of the wider danger of such a conflict.

America knows that Iran enjoys close strategic ties with its major adversaries – Russia and China, not to mention North Korea – and that their support cannot be ruled out should a regional confrontation come to pass. As a result, the Biden administration has opposed any direct US participation in a regional war and has engaged in intense diplomacy to prevent further escalation. Yet, one of the biggest problems for the US is that it lacks the necessary leverage to restrain either Israel or its adversaries. Netanyahu has persistently defied Washington’s cautions. And Tehran, along with its allies, views the US as a hegemonic power and committed backer of Israel despite its continued illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and its rejection of a two-state solution.

Israel crossed a redline by assassinating Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Normally based in Qatar, he was an honoured guest visiting to celebrate the recent election of President Masoud Pezeshkian. The strike breached Iranian security and sovereignty, and embarrassed the Iranian leadership for not being able to protect a visiting ally. Though Pezeshkian comes from the moderate faction of politics and has a reformist policy agenda, he now has no option but to join hands with his conservative opponents, who swirl around the powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in any direct or indirect retaliatory actions towards Israel. What form this retaliation, along with that of Hezbollah, will take and when it eventuates will be critical.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during his meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office.Credit: AP

While the killing of Haniyeh and Shukur certainly shakes the axis temporarily, it is unlikely to meaningfully deter Hezbollah or Iran from retaliating, or quash the Palestinian nationalist resistance. Instead, these deaths are more likely to deepen their resolve, and that of like-minded forces in the region to pursue their trenchant opposition to Israel in whatever way possible. Hamas may be weakened, but Hezbollah possesses the necessary means and ability to cause as much damage to the Jewish state as to what Israel inflicted upon Gaza.

The Middle East and, for that matter, the world, is now on tenterhooks.

To avoid an all-out regional war, it is imperative to urgently achieve two objectives: to reach an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release the hostages and prisoners as a foundation for a viable two-state solution, and to engage in a bargain involving Israel, Hezbollah and their outside backers, particularly the US and Iran, to agree to a mutually acceptable security space on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

The absence of Haniyeh as a key element in negotiating a ceasefire, and his assassination in the heart of Iran has made the task very difficult. But if level heads prevail on all sides, it might not be impossible yet.

Amin Saikal is emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University, an adjunct professor of social sciences at the University of Western Australia, and author of How to Lose a War: The story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan (Yale UP, 2024).