It is difficult to see how a cataclysmic war in the Middle East can be avoided at this point. The region was already teetering on the brink of disaster, and now the head of Hamas has been assassinated. It would be difficult to overstate the anger that the Islamic world is experiencing right now, and the Iranians are particularly mad because it happened on their territory. As you will see below, the Iranians are vowing that they will take revenge on Israel. If the Iranian response is too large, there is a risk that it could set off a series of events in the Middle East that nobody is going to be able to control.
What we just witnessed within a 24 hour period is truly unprecedented.
First, a key Hezbollah commander named Fuad Shukr that had been orchestrating terror attacks since the 1980s was taken out.
Israel says it has killed a top Hezbollah commander after carrying out an air strike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
The Israeli military says Fuad Shukr was the target of an “intelligence-based elimination.”
Then the entire world was absolutely shocked when the political leader of Hamas was assassinated in Tehran.
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran’s capital after attending the inauguration of the country’s new president, Iranian officials and the militant group said early Wednesday. Both blamed Israel for the strike that killed Haniyeh, and Iran’s foreign ministry said the U.S. bore responsibility for the killing as Israel’s biggest ally.
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And now there are unconfirmed reports that a top figure in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been assassinated in Damascus.
In a dramatic turn of events, unconfirmed reports from Syria suggest that Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces, has been assassinated in an attack near the Syrian capital of Damascus. Hajizadeh, a key figure in the Iranian military hierarchy, was reportedly the senior commander behind the Iranian ballistic and cruise missile attacks against Israel in April.
According to journalist Levent Kamal, “There are unconfirmed reports from Syria that Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Commander of the Aerospace Forces of the IRGC, was killed in an attack near the Syrian capital Damascus.”
This is essentially the equivalent of slamming a hornet’s nest with a baseball bat over and over again.
The Iranians are steaming mad, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told the world that “we consider it our duty to seek revenge.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that Iran would take revenge on Israel for Haniyeh’s killing, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. had not been involved in or informed of in advance.
“With this action, the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime prepared the ground for harsh punishment for itself, and we consider it our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Khamenei said in remarks carried by the country’s state media.
I believe that he is quite serious. In fact, it is being reported that “the red flag of revenge” has already been raised over the Jamkaran Mosque.
Iran has raised the red flag of revenge over the dome of the Jamkaran Mosque following the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
So what will Iran’s revenge look like? Do you remember how the Russians called it a “special military operation” when they invaded Ukraine? Well, now the Iranians are using the term “special operations” to describe what they have planned.
The response to the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh will be “special operations,” the Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN said Wednesday.
“The response to an assassination will indeed be special operations—harder and intended to instill deep regret in the perpetrator,” it wrote on X.
The statement came hours after Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike in the Iranian capital.
Hopefully the Iranians will not do anything stupid. The last time Iran directly attacked Israel, it was a carefully crafted assault that was orchestrated not to cause too much damage.
At the time, both sides wanted to avoid the kind of confrontation that could lead to all-out war. But now the Iranians are even angrier than they were the last time, and it is being reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has “issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly.”
Multiple Iranian officials have told the New York Times in a breaking story that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered retaliation against Israel for the brazen assassination by missile strike of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh which took place on Iranian soil in the early morning hours.
Officials referenced the “humiliating security failure” and that Iran must once against show “strength against the risk of escalation” in exacting revenge on Israel.
Khamenei has, according to the report, “issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader” – three Iranian sources who were briefed on the matter said.
For years, I have been relentlessly warning that there would be a major war in the Middle East that would involve Israel and Iran fighting one another directly. Once it fully erupts, the death and destruction that we will witness will shock the entire planet.
But I still don’t think that we are at that point quite yet.
I could be wrong, but I still think that we have at least a couple of months before this conflict spirals completely out of control. For now, I expect a limited attack from Iran which will cause only a moderate amount of damage inside of Israel. And like last time, I don’t think that the IDF will respond.
Israel has been able to take some of the biggest chess pieces off the board this week, and if they have to suffer a night of limited strikes in response I think they will consider that to be acceptable.
We have certainly gotten closer to all-out war, but in my opinion it is still going to take a little bit more to finally push things over the edge.
Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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