New Delhi: On Tuesday night, Indian roadways minister Nitin Gadkari was awaiting a slot to meet with the new President, Masoud Pezeshkian, but there was no confirmation from the Iranian side.
With over 80 foreign delegations waiting to formally call on the new president, the Iranians were apparently finding it difficult to provide a confirmation. Since it was deemed excessive to keep the minister idling in Tehran until Wednesday afternoon, his ticket was booked for a flight via Dubai the next morning.
While India’s request for a meeting was formally withdrawn, it was considered that another call would be taken on Wednesday morning. However, early Wednesday morning, Tehran woke up to the news of the assassination of the political head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, as reported by Iranian state media. Gadkari had shared the stage set for the photo op at the Iranian parliament – the Indian minister in the last row, while Haniyeh was in the front row.
Ismail Haniyeh.
While the details of the killing were sparse, there was no longer any question among Indian officials that the prebooked ticket, which took him through Dubai, would be utilised.
During previous presidential inaugurations in Iran, Indian ministers – whether it was External Affairs Minister Jaishankar or Gadkari himself – had separate meetings with the new president and even the Supreme Leader.
This time, besides a few informal exchanges during the ceremony at the Iranian parliament, the roadway minister was on the plane without any formal call on the Iranian leadership.
Nearly forty-eight hours later, there has been no official statement from the Indian government, illustrating New Delhi’s dilemma in West Asia.
This is not surprising. From the beginning, India has consistently termed the October 7 attack by Hamas as a terror incident. Indian ministers’ statements on Gaza have consistently asserted that terrorism should be punished.
However, just as feedback from the region led India to reiterate its support for a two-nation state solution, India also needs to maintain some distance from Israel for its own public interests. Israel had earlier demanded that India declare Hamas a terrorist organisation, but India has not yet taken that step.
India’s decision to send a senior minister to the swearing-in ceremony was part of New Delhi’s efforts to maintain good relations with Iran over the years. However, these ties have seen dips due to pressures from the United States, such as when India voted against Iran at the IAEA while negotiating the 123 nuclear agreement, or when India withdrew from purchasing sanctioned Iranian crude.
Any escalation of the Israel-Hamas conflict into regional violence in West Asia has immediate consequences for India. With a nine million-strong diaspora in the Gulf that would be directly impacted, the stakes are high. While India is not as dependent on the Gulf for its energy security, with Russia now its primary supplier, any disruption in the region would still lead to an increase in international oil prices.
The tension in the West Asian region is back to being taut as a piano wire, as the region once again braces for Iran to strike at Israel.
Iran had already launched drone and missile strikes against Israel on the night of April 13, in retaliation for the bombing of its consulate in Syria that killed seven officers of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Six days later, Israel countered with airstrikes which targeted strategic facilities near Iran’s city of Isfahan.
The calibrated steps taken by the two sides in April had seemed to have ensured deterrence. That is obviously gone now.
The killing of Haniyeh came just twelve hours after a Hezbollah commander, whom Israel claimed was responsible for a missile strike in the Golan Heights, was killed in a drone strike in a Beirut suburb.
While Israel took responsibility for the Beirut killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained silent on the death of the Hamas leader in Tehran. Israel had also not taken responsibility for the Damascus bombing in April.
For Netanyahu, the timing of these two attacks serves to prolong the Gaza war by shutting down the possibility of a ceasefire, which might have coincided with the release of hostages. Netanyahu has been under immense domestic political pressure from far-right alliance partners over the investigation of charges against Israeli soldiers for sexually abusing Palestinian prisoners.
In Tehran, Pezeshkian has been boxed into a single path on his first day in office.
Following the assassination of the Hamas leader, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei declared on Wednesday that it was “our duty to take revenge.” With the Supreme Leader holding the final authority in the Iranian system, it is clear that Pezeshkian has little choice.
The consensus was that Iran would certainly retaliate like Israel. The only uncertainty was whether it would act through its so-called ‘axis of resistance’ proxy groups, on its own, or both.
While the details of the attack have not been made public, most sources indicate it was not a missile attack, but rather a drone strike. This theory seemed credible, as during an Israeli retaliation in April, there were reports that the drones originated from within Iranian territory, suggesting Israeli penetration of Iran’s security umbrella.
The New York Times reported that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb likely smuggled into the guest house two months ago and then remotely activated. This was quickly confirmed by The Jerusalem Post and Axios.
However, Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a news website covering Iran and Arabian peninsula, claimed that this theory was probably disinformation originating from Israel, aiming to assert that Iran has no grounds for launching missiles or drones in retaliation.
He argued that this missed the point that Haniyeh had been a guest under Iranian protection on Iranian soil when there were other foreign delegations still in Tehran.
The head of Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah also underlined that Iran would retaliate as “it was an attack on Iranian honour”.
Similarly, an Israeli researcher, Danny Citrinowicz said that Iran saw this as “a personal blow to the leader of Iran himself, since Haniyeh was his guest at the inauguration ceremony of the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian”.
He analysed that while Iran was preparing for “another round of violence” against Israel, it was “still doubtful if Iran will expand the campaign against Israel and get caught up in a regional war”.
Citrinowicz noted that in contrast to the April attacks, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy groups would also intend to severely attack Israel this time, in combination with Iran.
“However, it’s clear that another round – and certainly if Iran seeks to expand the arsenal of targets in Israel – significantly increases the chance of a direct conflict between Israel and Iran, especially when there is no “closure mechanism” that can force a calm between the two countries,” he wrote.
The assassination of Haniyeh effectively closes any outreach that the moderate Pezeshkian might have planned toward the West in the early part of his term, as he had indicated during his campaign.
An Israeli observer of Iran noted last month that for Israel, hardline Iranian Presidents like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ebrahim Raisi “were assets.” “In contrast, more pragmatic presidents were viewed as a burden and a challenge that could make it more difficult to persuade the rest of the world to join the campaign against Iran and to avoid pursuing diplomacy with Tehran,” he wrote.
