Hamas leader assassinated in Iran | Ian Bremmer | Quick Take

The assassination of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran: potentially a major escalation in the conflict across the Middle East. Ian Bremmer explains what that means for the region, war in Gaza, and America’s election.

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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a quick take on the assassination of Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran while he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian leader, Pezeshkian. Almost certainly carried out by the Israelis. This is a big attack. It's an enormous success for the Israeli Defense Forces. It is potentially a very significant escalation in the conflict across the Middle East with a so-called Iran-led Axis of Resistance, of which Hamas, of course, is a core part. Also shows the weakness of the United States in its lack of influence over the Israeli government, over the Israeli military. So an awful lot of moving parts here.

Let's first talk about what we know. This is an enormous embarrassment. It is a security failure. It is an intelligence failure for the Iranian government. The idea that the leader, the political leader of Hamas who was there invited by the Iranian government in a secure military compound for the inauguration taken out and killed by the Israelis, enormously embarrassing. The Supreme Leader has already said that there will be significant retaliation. The Iranian permanent mission in the UN said special operations in kind, which implies not military targets, but perhaps civilian government targets in Israel. This clearly has the potential to spill over into broader conflict between Iran and Israel. The one thing that would really have a regional impact, a global economic impact despite the prices of oil and also likely draw the Americans directly in. I wouldn't say that this is more likely than not to happen, but it is more likely than at any point that we've seen in the war thus far. That probably includes even when we had the attack on the Iranian leader in Syria and Damascus by the Israelis and the Iranian response with drones and missiles. That's the first point, is that now we need to watch very carefully for when and what that Iranian escalation is likely to be, and does it end there or do the Israelis continue in a spiraling tit-for-tat? Iran, of course, is not just a non-state sort of member of the Axis. It doesn't just engage in terrorism, though they fund it widely across the region and more broadly, this is a country that is close to having nuclear weapons capability. They have a very large military, they have a very significant presence across the region. They now have established diplomatic relations with most of the states across the region. Anything that they do that is escalatory has global ramification, so that's the first point.

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