Iran held funeral processions Thursday and vowed revenge following the dying of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, a strike attributed to Israel.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh earlier than his burial in Qatar and earlier threatened extreme retaliation for his assassination.
In Tehran’s metropolis middle, hundreds of mourners, clutching posters of Haniyeh and waving Palestinian flags, assembled at Tehran University for the ceremony and subsequent procession, based on an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent.
Haniyeh’s dying was introduced a day earlier by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who mentioned he and his bodyguard had been killed in a strike on their lodging within the Iranian capital at 2 a.m. (10:30 p.m. GMT) Wednesday.
It got here simply hours after Israel focused and killed prime Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a retaliatory strike on the Lebanese capital, Beirut, elevating fears of a wider regional battle amid the continued Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Israel declined to touch upon the Tehran strike.
Iran’s state TV confirmed the coffins of Haniyeh and his bodyguards coated in Palestinian flags throughout the ceremony, which was attended by senior Iranian officers.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Gen. Hossein Salami had been current.
Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday.
Senior Hamas determine Khalil al-Hayya, the motion’s overseas relations chief, vowed throughout the funeral ceremony that “Ismail Haniyeh’s slogan, ‘We will not recognize Israel,’ will remain an immortal slogan” and “we will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.”
Iran’s conservative parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mentioned Iran “will certainly carry out the supreme leader’s order to avenge Haniyeh.”
“It is our duty to respond at the right time and in the right place,” he mentioned in a speech as crowds chanted “Death to Israel, Death to America!”
Our obligation
The caskets, adorned with a black-and-white sample resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, had been carried on a flower-bedecked truck by means of leafy streets, the place cooling water mists sprayed the flag-waving crowds.
Khamenei, who has the ultimate say in Iran’s political affairs, mentioned after Haniyeh’s dying that it was “our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Islamic Republic has not but formally disclosed the precise location of the strike.
Pezeshkian mentioned Wednesday that, “The Zionists (Israel) will soon see the consequences of their cowardly and terrorist act.”
The worldwide group, nonetheless, known as for de-escalation and a concentrate on securing a cease-fire in Gaza, which, based on a Hamas official, Israel had beforehand obstructed.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres mentioned the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation.”
All efforts, he mentioned, needs to be “leading to a cease-fire” in Gaza and the discharge of hostages taken throughout Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion on southern Israel, which marked the start of practically 10 months of battle.
The prime minister of key cease-fire dealer Qatar mentioned Haniyeh’s killing had thrown your entire mediation course of into doubt.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatari Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani mentioned in a publish on the social media website X.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday known as on “all parties” within the Middle East to “stop escalatory actions.”
Earlier, he mentioned a cease-fire in Gaza was nonetheless the “imperative,” although White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby mentioned the dual killings of Haniyeh and Shukr “don’t help” regional tensions.
Tensions infected
While Iran has blamed the assault on its arch-foe, Israel has declined to touch upon Haniyeh’s dying.
It did, nonetheless, declare accountability for killing Shukr, whom it blamed for a weekend rocket strike that killed 12 youths within the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
The killings come amid regional tensions already infected by the battle in Gaza, a battle that has concerned Iran-backed teams in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
One of these teams, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, “declared three days of mourning” for Haniyeh, with political chief Mahdi al-Mashat expressing “condolences to the Palestinian people and Hamas” over his killing, based on the group’s Saba news company.
The United Nations Security Council additionally convened an emergency assembly Wednesday at Iran’s request to debate the strike.
Hamas has been not directly negotiating a truce and hostage-prisoner change cope with Israel, in talks facilitated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States.
Analysts instructed AFP that Haniyeh was a moderating affect inside the group, and although he shall be changed, the dynamics inside Hamas may change.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the Oct. 7 assault that ignited the battle in Gaza.
That assault resulted within the deaths of 1,197 individuals.
The group additionally seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are nonetheless held captive in Gaza.
Concern has grown amongst Israelis over the destiny of these nonetheless held in Gaza.
Haniyeh’s killing “was a mistake as it threatens the possibility of having a hostage deal,” mentioned Anat Noy, a resident of the coastal metropolis of Haifa.
Israel’s retaliatory marketing campaign towards Hamas has killed a minimum of 39,445 individuals in Gaza, based on the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.
Source: www.dailysabah.com