Ismail Haniyeh’s funeral held in Tehran, calls for revenge

A huge crowd attended the funeral of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh yesterday morning in Tehran, with calls for revenge, a day after he was assassinated in an Israeli attack in Iran.
At Tehran University, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led worshippers in Haniyeh’s funeral.
A group of mourners holding pictures of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags gathered at Tehran University in the center of the capital.
Scenes broadcast by Iranian state television showed the coffins of Haniyeh and his guards, who were also martyred in the attack, draped with the Palestinian flag during a ceremony attended by senior Iranian officials including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guard commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami.
Khalil al-Hayya, the second-ranking member of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza, vowed at the ceremony that “Ismail Haniyeh’s slogan (we will not recognize Israel) will always be a slogan,” adding that “we will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from Palestinian land.”
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, chairman of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Council, said Iran “will definitely carry out the orders of the Supreme Leader” to avenge Haniyeh.
The New York Times, citing three unnamed Iranian officials, said Khamenei ordered a direct attack on Israel in response to Haniyeh’s assassination during an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf added in his speech as the crowd chanted “Death to Israel, Death to America” ​​that “it is our responsibility to react at the right time and in the right place.”
The assassination of Hamas’ political leader and Hezbollah’s military leader Fouad Shukr by occupation forces in Beirut on Tuesday has raised concerns about the widening of the conflict that has been going on for about a decade. For months, clashes have been taking place in the Gaza Strip between Iran’s arch-enemy Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah.
While all mediation efforts have so far failed to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, the war has heightened tensions across the Middle East between Israel on the one hand and Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, especially Lebanon’s Hezbollah on the other.
The White House on Wednesday deemed the twin attacks that killed people in Shouk, a southern suburb of Beirut, and Haniya, Tehran, “unhelpful” in curbing regional tensions, but denied any signs of an imminent escalation.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Mongolia on Thursday that the Middle East is on a path leading to “more conflict, more violence, more suffering and more insecurity, and that cycle must be broken.”
Against this backdrop, five sources told Reuters that senior Iranian officials were to meet representatives of Tehran’s regional allies Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen yesterday (Thursday) to discuss a possible response to Israel following the assassination of political leader Ismail Haniyeh at the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) office in Tehran.
The region risks widening the scope of the conflict between Israel, Iran and its allies after Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday and a senior military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group was killed in an Israeli strike on Tuesday on the southern suburbs of Beirut.