Middle East in ‘most dangerous moment since October 7’ as Hezbollah & Iran plot two pronged revenge on Israel
THE MIDDLE East is teetering at its most tumultuous point since the October 7 massacre last year which sparked a brutal war in Gaza, a regional expert has said.
Professor Asher Kaufman told The Sun that Iran and its largest terror proxy Hezbollah could launch a double pronged attack against Israel after days of ratcheting tensions.
Prof Kaufman warned: “The region is on edge, and I would say large parts of the global system is on edge.
“I’m sure that Iranian leadership and Hezbollah are now as we speak, deliberating what should be their response and how to respond together.
“To think strategically about a response that will involve Hezbollah and Iran.”
It comes after Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed on Monday in a suspected Israeli precision missile strike as they slept in Tehran.
The apparent assassination sparked fury across the region among Hamas’ staunchest allies – all Iranian backed proxy armies.
Tehran’s most developed and best funded proxy is Hezbollah, which operates out of southern Lebanon just metres from Israel across the country’s southern border.
Professor Kaufman, from the KROC Institute for International Peace Studies, investigates the ongoing tension between the two.
He told The Sun this is the most dangerous point the Middle East has been at since war broke out in October last year.
An invasion across the northern Israeli boundary, either from Hezbollah into Israel or from the IDF into Lebanon, he says is “on the cards”.
Fears of an all-out war breaking out in the region are climbing after days of fraught back and forth strikes and the assassination of two key enemies of Israel.
Less than 24 hours before Haniyeh was killed on Monday, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) reportedly took out Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander, in a targeted strike on Beirut.
After Israel targeted the Lebanon capital Prof Kaufman said it’s a “serious concern” that Hezbollah could “hit Israeli urban centres”, in “Tel Aviv or Haifa”.
“A full war would be devastating for the region,” he warned.
Civilians on both sides “could continue to die” as they have already for months in tit-for-tat strikes across the border, the expert said.
He told The Sun: “The previous assassination of Hezbollah’s leader [Fuad Shukr] already elevated the stakes and the possibility of a greater confrontation with Hezbollah.”
And experts previously told The Sun that Iran’s network of bloodthirsty proxy groups across the region are “primed and ready” to attack Israel.
When targeting Shukr on Monday, the IDF were likely responding to a Hezbollah strike on a football pitch in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in Israel’s occupied Golan Heights.
The rocket attack killed 12 young people including children on Saturday evening.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to hit back after the deadly strike.
Hours before the pitch hit, on Saturday morning, Israel struck another school in the Gaza Strip claiming it was being used as a command centre for Hamas terror operations.
According to Palestinian health officials at least 30 people were killed and more than 100 left wounded.
While Prof Kaufman clarified that he thinks no major players in the region want a full-blown war, he warned: “World War one erupted out of also, miscalculations of certain actors that led eventually to an all out war.
“We are in a moment where it’s very, very difficult to predict how things would happen.”
He added: “Last time Iran’s sovereignty was violated in the assassination in April of its top military leader in Damascus, Tehran responded by firing missiles and drones at Israel.”
In April a suspected Israeli attack on an embassy in Damascus, Syria, took out several high-ranking IRGC officers.
Days later Iran launched hundreds of missiles towards Israel in a dangerous escalation of tensions in the region.
But Israeli defences destroyed almost all of the rockets and unleashed its own hyper precise strike which hit an airbase near Isfahan, in central Iran.
Sir Ivor Roberts, senior adviser to UANI and the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), also spoke to The Sun about a possible retaliation to this week’s developments.
Sir Roberts, who lived in Lebanon and dealt with Hezbollah in the 1980s, said “the whole region is a tinderbox”.
He told The Sun that the strike on Iranian soil which killed Haniyeh is a “challenge” to the authority of the new Iranian president and a “major slap in the face”.
“It could aggravate the situation, an already delicate situation. It’s a major blow to their axis of resistance,” he said.
“The new president in Tehran, who has just been enthroned, it’s in a way a kind of challenge to his authority.
“I very much doubt that the Iranians will simply shrug it off… to happen on their soil is a major slap in the face.
“I think there will be an Iranian response. This has the potential to make matters a great deal worse throughout the region.”
Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed it would be “Tehran’s duty” to seek “revenge for Ismail Haniyeh’s blood” after Monday’s alleged assassination.
Hamas also swore to seek “dire consequences” for the strike that killed its political leader, responsible for conducting negotiations outside of the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the country doesn’t want to see war in the region but is “preparing for all possibilities”.
But retired Israeli brigadier general Amir Avivi told The Sun that the strike which eliminated Haniyeh is evidence of Israel’s formidable capacity to hit its enemies anytime, anywhere.
He said: “Israel won’t stop until every single leader that was involved in this massacre will pay for what they did.
“Obviously, it sends a message that Israel can get to any terror leader anywhere.
“Even if it takes a bit of time, eventually, we’ll be able to target them”, he said.
And Amir told The Sun: “It’s not the first time that we see Israel operating at the heart of the Iranian regime.”
Who was Ismail Haniyeh?
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Ismail Haniyeh, one of the founding members of the terror group, unflinchingly represented the bloodthirsty clan for decades, even past the death of his own children.
The 62-year-old was responsible for running Hamas’ political operations from Doha, Qatar’s capital.
Born in a refugee camp in northern Gaza, he lead the group through several wars with Israel and served as a fundamental power player for the cult.
Over the last ten months he had been responsible for conducting ceasefire talks, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
He survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 2003, before the IDF took out his mentor – the founder of Hamas itself Sheik Ahmed Yassin – in 2004.
Standing outside a hospital in Gaza at the time, the man who would become one of Hamas’ principal leaders urged people not to cry but to focus on revenge instead.
By 2006 he was working as the leader of Hamas in Gaza, a position now held by Israel’s number one enemy – Yahya Sinwar.
He moved to Qatar in 2017 when he was named as the group’s new political leader.
The group was trying to change its image at the time as it made bids across the international stage for more influence.
Haniyeh represented the Iran-backed terror proxy in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt.
His ruthless approach to furthering the Hamas agenda would overrule even the assassination of his own children and grandchildren years later.
In April this year an Israeli airstrike killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren.
In June, Hamas claimed his sister and her family were also killed by an Israeli strike.
Haniyeh simply said at the time: “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices.”
He added that he had lost dozens of family members over years of war between Hamas and Israel.
The terror boss was given news of his children’s deaths while on a hospital visit. After hearing the news, he continued to tour the building as normal.
Haniyeh spent time inside Israeli prisons in the 1980s and 1990s.
By 1988 he was among the founding members of Hamas, working under Yassin.
His assassination serves as a fundamental blow to Hamas – with leaders dubbing it a “treacherous Zionist raid” on Wednesday morning.