Iran Warns Israel Will Face ‘Nightmare’ After Killing Senior Hamas Leader

Hamas Political Bureau Deputy Chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a drone strike allegedly perpetrated by Israel on January 2 in Beirut, Lebanon. Israeli officials were allegedly instructed not to officially claim responsibility for the attack.

Israel will face a “nightmare” for its decision to assassinate a senior member of Hamas’ political leadership, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani has warned.

“The enemy and the Zionists seek to downplay their heavy defeat in Gaza and the West Bank by assassinating resistance leaders,” Qaani wrote in a letter to Hamas Political Bureau head Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday.

“The world will see how the comrades of Martyr [al-]Arouri turn into a nightmare for” Israel, the Iranian commander added.

“Al-Arouri was martyred with a brilliant record in the first, al-Aqsa and al-Quds intifadas,” Qaani added, referring to three Palestinian campaigns of resistance against Israel between 1987-1993, 2000-2005 and the conflict which began in October 2023 with the Hamas attack against Israel, but quickly moved to Gaza.

Al-Arouri, 57, was killed in a drone attack in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh on January 2 along with five other individuals, with Israeli and US officials unofficially confirming Tel Aviv’s responsibility. Members of the Netanyahu government were purportedly instructed not to comment or claim responsibility publicly. “Whoever did this has a gripe with Hamas,” Netanyahu foreign affairs spokesman Mark Regev sarcastically said following al-Arouri’s murder.

Al-Arouri was picked as Hamas Political Bureau deputy chief in 2017. In 1993, he founded the al-Qassam Brigades – Hamas’s military wing. In his capacity in the Political Bureau, Arouri’s job included engaging in diplomacy, with the official visiting Moscow in late October to negotiate the release of Russian nationals held captive by Hamas.

Secretary-General of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah political and military movement Hassan Nasrallah warned Friday that al-Arouri’s death would not be left without an answer.

“The response is inevitably coming. We cannot remain silent on a violation of this magnitude because it means the whole of Lebanon would be exposed,” Nasrallah said Friday in a televised address. Warning an inevitable “response and punishment,” the Hezbollah chief said the “decision is now in the hands of the battlefield,” and that “fighters from all areas of the border…will be the ones responding to the dangerous violation [in Beirut].”

Allied diplomatically to Iran and possessing up to 75,000 fighters and up to 150,000 missiles and rockets of various classes, Hezbollah is significantly more powerful militarily than Hamas, a Sunni militia concentrated in Gaza with which it has had periods of poor relations.

The Lebanese Shiite militant group has gotten into multiple skirmishes with Israeli forces on the border amid the ongoing crisis in Gaza, but neither it nor Iran have allowed themselves to be pulled directly into a wider war with Israel – believing this may be part of Tel Aviv’s strategy to draw the US and its allies into the crisis directly.