The killing, coupled with an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, comes just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's high-profile visit to Washington, during which he came under heavy pressure to reach a cease-fire deal.
Israel has held back claiming responsibility for killing Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas outside Gaza, but Iran is blaming Israel for the predawn air strike Wednesday in Tehran.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the U.S. was not aware of or involved in the strike, but he reiterated U.S. efforts to achieve a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, secure the release of an estimated 115 Israeli hostages, and address the dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
"I can tell you that the imperative of getting a cease-fire, the importance that that has for everyone, remains," Blinken said in an interview in Singapore during an Asia tour.
Haniyeh's death is not viewed as a major blow to Hamas's leadership, where the concentration of power is in the hands of Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, but he was a key figure in the high-stakes cease-fire talks with Israel. Those negotiations will likely stall as a protest to his death and as funeral ceremonies are undertaken in Doha, Qatar — so far set for Thursday.
The U.S. had blacklisted Haniyeh as a specially designated global terrorist in 2018, but his long-time residence in Doha was part of an agreement between Israel, the U.S. and Qatar to keep open channels of communication with Hamas amid years of tenuous truces broken by bursts of open conflict.
"The administration is in an awkward situation," said Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen and senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.
"They will certainly say Israel has a right to self-defense, blah, blah, blah, but behind the scenes, I suspect that they're seething."
And Haniyeh's absence from diplomatic talks opens a vacuum that can be filled by voices advocating for widening war, Feierstein added, in a conflict where nearly all fronts are primed for escalation.
And the symbolism of the Haniyeh assassination, combined with Israeli strikes on a senior Hezbollah figure this week in Lebanon, raises the risk of an escalatory reaction from Iran and its proxies across the region.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
