Only Gaza Ceasefire Can Delay Iran's Israel Response, Say Iranian Officials

People walk past a banner with a picture of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a street in Tehran, Iran, August 12, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
People walk past a banner with a picture of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a street in Tehran, Iran, August 12, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
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Only Gaza Ceasefire Can Delay Iran's Israel Response, Say Iranian Officials

People walk past a banner with a picture of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a street in Tehran, Iran, August 12, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
People walk past a banner with a picture of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a street in Tehran, Iran, August 12, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights

Only a ceasefire deal in Gaza stemming from hoped-for talks this week would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil, three senior Iranian officials said, Reuters reported.

Iran has vowed a severe response to Haniyeh's killing, which took place as he visited Tehran late last month and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement. The US Navy has deployed warships and a submarine to the Middle East to bolster Israeli defenses.

One of the sources, a senior Iranian security official, said Iran, along with allies such as Hezbollah, would launch a direct attack if the Gaza talks fail or it perceives Israel is dragging out negotiations. The sources did not say how long Iran would allow for talks to progress before responding. With an increased risk of a broader Middle East war after the killings of Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, Iran has been involved in intense dialogue with Western countries and the United States in recent days on ways to calibrate retaliation, said the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In comments published on Tuesday, the US ambassador to Türkiye confirmed Washington was asking allies to help convince Iran to de-escalate tensions. Three regional government sources described conversations with Tehran to avoid escalation ahead of the Gaza ceasefire talks, due to begin on Thursday in either Egypt or Qatar.

"We hope our response will be timed and executed in a way that does not harm a potential ceasefire," Iran's mission to the UN said on Friday in a statement. Iran's foreign ministry on Tuesday said calls to exercise restraint "contradict principles of international law."

Iran's foreign ministry and its Revolutionary Guards Corps did not immediately respond to questions for this story. The Israeli Prime Minister's Office and the US State Department did not respond to questions. "Something could happen as soon as this week by Iran and its proxies... That is a US assessment as well as an Israel assessment," White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday.

"If something does happen this week, the timing of it could certainly well have an impact on these talks we want to do on Thursday," he added. At the weekend, Hamas cast doubt on whether talks would go ahead. Israel and Hamas have held several rounds of talks in recent months without agreeing a final ceasefire. In Israel, many observers believe a response is imminent after Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Iran would "harshly punish" Israel for the strike in Tehran.

Iran's regional policy is set by the elite Revolutionary Guards, who answer only to Khamenei, the country's top authority. Iran's relatively moderate new president Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly reaffirmed Iran's anti-Israel stance and its support for resistance movements across the region since taking office last month.

Meir Litvak, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University's Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, said he thought Iran would put its needs before helping its ally Hamas but that Iran also wanted to avoid a full-scale war.

"The Iranians never subordinated their strategy and policies to the needs of their proxies or protégées,” Litvak said. “An attack is likely and almost inevitable but I don't know the scale and the timing.”

Iran-based analyst Saeed Laylaz said the Islamic Republic's leaders were now keen to work towards a ceasefire in Gaza, "to obtain incentives, avoid an all-out war and strengthen its position in the region."

Laylaz said Iran had not previously been involved in the Gaza peace process but was now ready to play "a key role."

Iran, two of the sources said, was considering sending a representative to the ceasefire talks, in what would be a first since the war started in Gaza.

The representative would not directly attend the meetings but would engage in behind-the-scenes discussions "to maintain a line of diplomatic communication" with the United States while negotiations proceed.

Two senior sources close to Lebanon's Hezbollah said Tehran would give the negotiations a chance but would not give up its intentions to retaliate.

A ceasefire in Gaza would give Iran cover for a smaller "symbolic" response, one of the sources said. Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Since then, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the health ministry.

- APRIL MISSILES

Iran has not publicly indicated what would be the target of an eventual response to the Haniyeh assassination.

On April 13, two weeks after two Iranian generals were killed in a strike on Tehran's embassy in Syria, Iran unleashed a barrage of hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles towards Israel, damaging two airbases. Almost all of the weapons were shot down before they reached their targets.

"Iran wants its response to be much more effective than the April 13 attack," said Farzin Nadimi, senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East policy."

Nadimi said such a response would require "a lot of preparation and coordination" especially if it involved Iran's network of allied armed groups opposing Israel and the United States across the Middle East, with Hezbollah the senior member of the so-called "Axis of Resistance," that along with Iraqi militias and Yemen's Houthis have harried Israel since Oct. 7.

Two of the Iranian sources said Iran would support Hezbollah and other allies if they launched their own responses to the killing of Haniyeh and Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who died in a strike in Beirut the day before Haniyeh was killed in Tehran.

The sources did not specify what form such support could take.



Trump, Harris Clash in Fiery Presidential Debate 

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
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Trump, Harris Clash in Fiery Presidential Debate 

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)

Kamala Harris savaged Donald Trump as "extreme" and the friend of dictators, while the Republican branded her a "Marxist" in a bitter televised debate Tuesday that poured fuel on an already explosive US presidential election.

On hot-button issues ranging from abortion and race to the fate of US democracy, the two held their first -- and possibly only -- debate ahead of the November 5 election, with each hoping for a breakthrough in an agonizingly close race.

Trump, who only a few weeks ago had believed himself to be cruising to victory, reacted to pressure from Harris by raising his voice and resorting to the kinds of colorful invective and often meandering insults that he uses at his rallies.

Harris, 59, responded by looking on in amusement, then clearly got under his skin, declaring that she represents a fresh start after the "mess" of the Trump presidency -- and saying: "We're not going back."

The ABC News debate began when the Democratic vice president unexpectedly approached the Republican former president to shake his hand, before they took to their lecterns in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Then the niceties ended.

Within minutes, 78-year-old Trump called her a "Marxist" and also falsely claimed that she and President Joe Biden had allowed "millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums."

Harris pointed out that Trump is a convicted felon, called him "extreme" and said it is "a tragedy" that throughout his career he had used "race to divide the American people."

One of their most jarring exchanges was on Trump's unprecedented refusal to accept losing to Biden in the 2020 election, before trying to overturn the result.

In front of the audience expected to run into the tens of millions of voters, Trump doubled down, insisting there is "so much proof" that he really won.

Harris turned to Trump and said that his own former security officials in the White House have called him a "disgrace."

"World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump," she said.

Trump would "give up" Ukraine to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, "a dictator who would eat you for lunch," she charged. "Dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again."

Another intense exchange was on abortion.

Trump insisted that while having pushed for the end of the federal right to abortion, he wanted individual states to make their own policy.

Harris said he was telling a "bunch of lies" and called his policies "insulting to the women of America."

- Harris mocks Trump rallies -

The last presidential debate in June doomed Biden's reelection campaign, after he delivered a catastrophic performance against Trump. Harris took over as nominee amid Democratic fears that Biden was too old and infirm to defeat the scandal-plagued Republican.

Harris has earned a reputation in past debates and while serving as a US senator for ice-cold put-downs and tough questions.

Her five days of intensive preparation appeared to pay off against Trump, perhaps the most brutal public speaker in American politics.

Trump has long defied political gravity by seeming invulnerable to usual attacks.

He has been convicted of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with an adult film star, found liable for sexual abuse, and faces trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

But Harris clearly needled him on one of his favorite, if less serious topics -- his trademark rallies.

Attendees, she said, prompting an angry retort, were leaving early out of "exhaustion and boredom."

At another moment where Trump appeared to be losing his cool, he talked at length about a debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants have been eating local people's pets in Ohio.

"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," he said before being corrected by the ABC News moderator that the authorities in the town of Springfield have said this did not happen.

With only 56 days left before the election, the intense spotlight was a rare opportunity for both candidates to shift the balance in what polls show is an almost evenly split contest.

And the debate was a key chance for Harris to introduce herself to more voters after only jumping into the race less than eight weeks ago, when 81-year-old Biden abruptly quit.