Haniyeh assassination: Possibility of regional conflict ‘cannot be excluded’
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00:00With Filippo Dionigi, who joins me from Bristol, Filippo, just off the back of what Iris was
00:05saying moments ago, I mean, what are your thoughts on the fears of this spiraling into
00:09a bigger war? I mean, it's something that we are seeing this retaliation,
00:13these threats of retaliation, and yet we're also hearing from many of the parties involved that
00:17no one wants this to turn into a regional war. How do you see this moving forward?
00:22I think the possibility of a regional conflagration of this war is something
00:28that cannot be excluded. But in the short to medium term, what I'm expecting instead
00:33is a process of escalation and response that will try to balance the sort of balance between
00:44re-establishing deterrence for Iran in particular, and also trying to deliver the symbolic value
00:52of avenging the death of Haniyeh. There are multiple fronts here at stake. There is Iran
00:58on one hand, there is Hamas and Gaza on the other. But there is also the question of Lebanon
01:03and Hezbollah with the killing, the presumed killing of Shukr yesterday evening.
01:09Right. Iran's supreme leader is already threatening vengeance on Israel. I mean,
01:15how is this attack different in the fact that it was indeed on Iranian soil?
01:20Well, it is different because it shows that Israel has access to Iranian territory for its
01:28operation. It is different because it has been carried out from the air as far as we know,
01:34whereas before previous assassination, previous extra legal assassination carried out presumably
01:42by Israel, well, were carried out with agents on the ground. And therefore, it exacerbates the
01:48sense of insecurity of Iran in front of an Israeli threat, right? So that somehow upset
01:55the balance and the deterrence capacity of Iran against possible Israeli threats. And therefore,
02:00Iran feels compelled to respond and re-establish that deterrence balance with Israel.
02:07Well, how might concretely it do that?
02:11Probably we're going to see something similar to what we saw in response to the attacks of
02:17the Iranian embassy and consulate in Damascus. That's the least we can expect,
02:23at least, which was a gradual and sort of long-term response that has produced
02:29suspense and sense of insecurity among the Israelis. And then it turned out to be an attack
02:34against Israeli territory, demonstrating the capacity to attack Israeli territory,
02:41although then that attack was prevented by the Iron Dome at that point. My sense is that,
02:45again, Iran will have to balance a response that will have symbolic value for the support with the
02:55Palestinian front and that will establish deterrence against Israel, but will not
03:00necessarily produce the consequence of a regional all-out war, because that's not what Iran
03:07wants to achieve anyway.
03:09Indeed. And another key piece of this puzzle, of course, is the conflict with Hezbollah in
03:14Lebanon. How does this attack link to that attack Tuesday in Beirut?
03:19I think there are two separate issues here. Yesterday's attack in Beirut was a response,
03:25and this was acknowledged and declared by Israeli forces themselves, a response to Saturday's
03:31massacre in the occupied Golan Heights. And also here, the idea was that Israel had to respond to
03:41an attack that has caused more than 12 casualties, mostly minors, and therefore had to demonstrate
03:47its capacity to prevent the possibility of such attacks to occur again. But the response was
03:54against a military target, that is Fuad Shukr, a leading military figure within Hezbollah,
04:01meaning that Israel was in fact acting within what were the informal rules of engagement of
04:08the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and therefore giving the possibility to Hezbollah
04:14to respond also within those rules of engagement, and therefore not necessarily escalate the
04:20conflict further, but continue along the same lines of how the conflict has unfolded thus far
04:26since October 8.
04:28Filippo, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. Filippo Dionighi in Bristol.
04:32Thank you.