Lara Seligman and Michael R. Gordon
The Biden administration is scrambling to salvage prospects for a Gaza cease-fire after the political leader of Hamas was killed in a strike in Tehran, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the talks and leaving officials worried that Israel may now face major retaliatory attacks on two fronts.
On Tuesday, Israel said it was responsible for an airstrike in southern Beirut that killed a senior leader of Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, one of the key negotiators in the long-stalled cease-fire talks, was dead in a mysterious strike in Iran’s capital.
Israel hasn’t claimed responsibility for the strike on Haniyeh, but Hamas and Iran blamed the attack on Israel.
While U.S. officials said they expected the Beirut attack, the Tehran strike caught Washington off guard and almost immediately darkened the already remote prospects for a U.S.-brokered Gaza cease-fire. Even more alarming to the U.S., the killings threatened to unleash new and more severe reprisals against Israel and potentially American forces in the region by Iran and its proxies.
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