Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s assassination of Hamas civilian Politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was a crime, and we all know from police procedurals that the investigator has to look for “means, motive and opportunity.”
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu certainly had the means and the opportunity. It has assassinated people in Tehran before, likely in coordination with the Iranian anti-regime terrorist group, the Islamic-Marxist Mojahedin-e Khalq (the MEK or MKO), the “People’s Jihadis.” These targets were nuclear scientists or regime officials, however, not foreign visiting dignitaries. Iranian reporter Saeed Azimi wrote that it was not clear whether the strike was carried out by a rocket or a quadcopter drone.
Geolocation of the building in northern Tehran where Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly assassinated: 35.81931, 51.41559. An Iranian official shared the image with @farnazfassihi, and it is circulating on Telegram. Green cloth and rubble is visible on the east side of the building. pic.twitter.com/gDi1vMfDbr
— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) July 31, 2024
So then we come to motive. For motive we have to consider the position of Netanyahu. He is afraid of his corruption trials resuming if his government falls and he goes out of office. He is also afraid that once he is no longer prime minister and/or the war on Gaza ends, the Israeli public and its Establishment will begin looking more closely into his culpability for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by the al-Qassam Brigades (the Hamas paramilitary wing) and its allies such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Netanyahu had after all for a decade been a conduit of Egyptian and Gulf money to Gaza, which was deposited in Israeli bank accounts and then transfered at the prime minister’s behest. Netanyahu thought he had a deal with Hamas that they could run Gaza as their fief and receive these outside monies, as long as they kept the Palestinians divided and posed only a minor annoyance to Israeli security. It was like making a pact with a Bengal tiger that he should henceforth be a vegetarian, and then poking him repeatedly with a stick.
So Netanyahu’s major motivation is to keep Gaza as a forever war. It is not, of course, actually a war. There are still some al-Qassam Brigades irregulars and occasional minor firefights. But most of the action is Netanyahu arbitrarily moving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza around, from one place to another, giving them no respite or opportunity to reconstitute a normal life. He has destroyed most of the places that could be used as homes. He has destroyed the schools, the universities, the hospitals, the refugee centers, the mosques, the churches. He has destroyed the water infrastructure, so that whole families have less than a gallon of water a day for drinking, washing, and cooking, whereas scientists say every individual needs at least 4 gallons of water a day for these purposes. He has destroyed waste treatment facilities, so that most of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are sick. Some even now have polio, and there is no Israeli plan to vaccinate them, though Israeli soldiers are being vaccinated.
But the problem with this military campaign against women and children is that it is hard to hide the lack of a credible enemy or that it is mostly blowing up minors and mothers. Hard to keep that going.
Netanyahu appears to want to go on behaving in this genocidal way in Gaza for months to come, until he feels his popularity in Israel has returned and he could survive an electoral challenge. He does not have to face elections until 2026, two years from now, by which time there will be hundreds of thousands of fewer Palestinians in Gaza if he continues his current tactics.
In order to stay out of jail and to continue to enjoy wealth and power, Netanyahu needs to keep his political coalition together. He has a 64-seat majority in a Knesset or parliament of 120, so even losing 5 parliamentarians could provoke new elections. Keeping the coalition together is not easy. He brought the fascist Kahanaists into the government, the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis. On Monday they rampaged through a military base attempting to protect suspected Israeli war criminals from the military police. The Netanyahu government, to the extent it assuages them, now stands for the legitimacy of torture and abuse of POWs as a matter of policy. This lawless position does not sit right with a lot of Israelis, many of whom fear the plans of the Kahanaists for an Iran-style Jewish theocracy in Israel. To make things worse, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jewish fundamentalists, some 14 percent of the population, who are the ultimate Israeli welfare queens and had been exempted from military service. These “Haredim” are furious at the prospect, and they are key to Netanyahu’s coalition. They are now a wild card.
Not only is Israeli society fissiparous, but the other need Netanyahu has in keeping the Gaza forever war going is knee-jerk support from the United States and complete impunity.
Joe Biden is willing to grant Netanyahu that impunity. The United States resupplies the Israeli military with weaponry and ammunition for leveling Gaza in real time– the Israelis ran out of their own supplies months ago. Netanyahu also needs to be sure that Washington will run interference for him with countries and institutions not willing to go along with the genocide, that it will slap down Spain and Ireland and Norway and the International Criminal Court — severe critics of Netanyahu’s government — and dissuade the UK and France from joining them.
But like Israeli society, Washington is also fissiparous. Biden has ended his presidential run. Kamala Harris has suddenly emerged as powerful in the administration. She publicly told Netanyahu off about his total war on Gaza civilians, which clearly startled and rattled him. She needs the youth vote, and she can’t afford to be yoked to Netanyahu, who evokes sheer disgust in most Americans under 35. Harris not only needs the youths, but she needs to bring along both the blue dog democrats and the Progressive Caucus, and the latter are not following her into any fond bear hug of Netanyahu, of the sort Biden has advocated.
What if Harris persuaded Biden that in order for her to defeat Trump, she needs him to end the policy of impunity? Biden himself had made a half-hearted effort to pressure Netanyahu into negotiations with Hamas for a release of Israeli hostages and a pause in the fighting that might turn into a ceasefire.
With whom did Biden insist Netanyahu negotiate? Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ civilian political bureau. What if Harris managed to turn the screws and threaten Netanyahu with a cut-off of ammunition or other aid if he didn’t make a deal? Netanyahu kept pretending to negotiate, but every time Haniyeh made a concession, Netanyahu would make a new demand and scupper the talks.
If Netanyahu rubbed out Haniyeh, and it is very likely he did, then it was a perfect strategy for him. Harris and her allies in the White House can’t make him negotiate with Haniyeh if Haniyeh is dead. Moreover, it is predictable that Hamas would pull out of the negotiations entirely after the murder of their leader.
Even better, by blowing away Haniyeh in Tehran, Netanyahu has pulled the beard of Iranian clerical Leader Ali Khamenei. If Iran retaliates, then Biden has to step up to protect Israel, and even Harris would have to be circumspect lest she look weak. Netanyahu also took out a high Hezbollah official in Beirut the same day, in hopes that Hezbollah will retaliate.
In other words, the nothing burger of the Gaza war is no longer a sufficient vehicle to keep Netanyahu in power and out of jail. He needs a wider, more credible and more intense set of conflicts than beheading children with quadcopters. These geopolitical counter-strikes have the potential for making Israelis rally around him and put away their internal squabbles, and for making Harris back off her criticism of him for his Gaza war crimes. Now it is all about whether you stand with Israel against Iran, and Americans and Israelis have widely hated Iran for over forty years.
It is perfect. For Benjamin Netanyahu.
Not for the rest of us.
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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:
Al Jazeera English: “What is the fallout from the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran? | Inside Story” .
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