Iran held funeral processions on Thursday amid calls for revenge after the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in an attack in Tehran blamed on Israel.
The Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh before his burial in Qatar, having earlier threatened “severe punishment” for his killing.
In downtown Tehran, thousands of mourners carrying posters of Haniya and Palestinian flags gathered for the ceremony at Tehran University before a procession, according to AFP correspondent.
Haniyeh’s death was announced the day before by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which said he and his bodyguard were killed in an attack on their accommodation in the Iranian capital at 02:00 on Wednesday.
It came hours after Israel targeted and killed top Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr in retaliation in the Lebanese capital Beirut, sparking fears of a wider regional conflict in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Israel declined to comment on the attack in Tehran.
Iranian state television showed the coffins of Haniyeh and his bodyguards draped in Palestinian flags during the ceremony attended by senior Iranian officials. President Massoud Pezeskian and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Hossein Salami, were present.
Haniyeh was visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday.
Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, the movement’s head of foreign relations, promised during 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 parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran “will definitely 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 said in a speech with crowds chanting “Death to Israel, Death to America!”
“Our Duty”
The caskets, with a black-and-white pattern resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, were placed on a flower-festooned truck through leafy streets where a mist of water sprayed the flag-waving crowds.
Khamenei, who has the final say in Iran’s political affairs, said after Haniyeh’s death that “it is our duty to avenge his blood as he was martyred on the soil of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Islamic Republic has yet to officially release any information on the exact location of the strike.
Pezeshkian said on Wednesday that “the Zionists (Israel) will soon see the consequences of their cowardly and terrorist act.”
The international community, however, called for de-escalation and a focus on ensuring a ceasefire in Gaza — which Haniya had, according to a Hamas official, previously accused Israel of obstructing.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation”. All efforts, he said, should “lead to a cease-fire” in Gaza and the release of hostages taken during Hamas’ Oct. 7 offensive in southern Israel, which began nearly 10 months of fighting.
The prime minister of Qatar’s main ceasefire mediator said Haniyeh’s killing called into question the entire mediation process. “How can mediation succeed when one side murders the other side’s negotiator?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in a post on social networking site X.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Thursday called on “all parties” in the Middle East to “cease escalating actions”. Earlier he said a ceasefire in Gaza was still “imperative”, although White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the twin killings of Haniyeh and Soukr “do not help” regional tensions.
Intensity inflammation
While Iran blamed the attack on its arch-enemy, Israel declined to comment on Haniya’s death. But he claimed responsibility for the killing of Shukr, whom he blamed for a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young men in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
The killings come amid regional tensions already fueled by fighting in Gaza, a conflict that has drawn Iran-backed militant groups into Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
One of those groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, “declared three days of mourning” for Haniya, with political leader Mahdi al-Mashat offering “condolences to the Palestinian people and Hamas” for his killing, according to the group. Samba news agency.
The United Nations Security Council also convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday at Iran’s request to discuss the strike.
Hamas has been indirectly negotiating a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal with Israel for months, in talks facilitated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States.
Analysts said AFP that Haniyeh had a moderating influence within the Islamist group and that while he will be replaced, the dynamics within Hamas could change.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that sparked conflict in Gaza.
This attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to a AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Hamas also took 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still being held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Concern has grown among Israelis about the fate of those still held in Gaza. Haniyeh’s killing “was a mistake as it threatens the possibility of a hostage deal,” said Anat Noy, a resident of the coastal city of Haifa.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,445 people in Gaza, according to the region’s health ministry.
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