Benjamin Netanyahu's assassination once again shows Netanyahu's contempt for US-Israel relations | Benjamin Netanyahu

Speaking alongside Donald Trump in Florida a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was vague about the latest prospect of a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

“I hope we can reach an agreement. Time will tell,” the Israeli prime minister said, two days after his controversial speech to a joint session of the US Congress.

Throughout his three-day visit to the United States, Netanyahu was careful to avoid making any commitments to the deal Biden unveiled on May 31. While the United States insisted publicly that the onus was on Hamas to accept the plan, the administration knew it also had to personally go after Netanyahu for his unwillingness to commit to a permanent ceasefire.

Yet according to US reports, it now appears that at the very moment Netanyahu was publicly speculating about a deal, a remote-controlled bomb had already been smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, waiting for its target: Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader assassinated Wednesday night.

According to the New York Times and CNN, Haniyeh was killed by an explosive device placed in the guesthouse where he was staying during his visit to Iran and where he was under the protection of the powerful Revolutionary Guards. Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of being responsible for the attack, which the Jewish state has neither confirmed nor denied. It is part of a pattern of targeted Israeli assassinations on Iranian soil.

According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Netanyahu never disclosed such a plan to his American allies. Blinken was only informed of the assassination afterward, in Singapore. Later that day, he insisted that he had been caught off guard, almost as badly as Iranian intelligence.

In Netanyahu's defense, Israel has not confirmed the American media reports and has never hidden its intention to kill senior Hamas leaders in retaliation for the October 7 attacks. And even when he addressed Congress, the prime minister could not have known that the announced plan would work so well or have such a devastating impact.

But the potential consequences of such an assassination were clear to all. It took the frustrated Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to accuse Netanyahu of sabotage. How can mediation succeed when one side assassinates the other side's negotiator? he asked.

In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby put on a brave face, saying the cease-fire process had not been completely torpedoed, insisting: “We still believe the agreement on the table is worth pursuing.”

The assassination underscores how the United States is often seen as a junior partner in relations with Israel, observers say. Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, said: “This is another example of Netanyahu giving Biden the finger. There have been months of repeated slights and humiliations from Netanyahu, culminating in this ridiculous moment last week when he stood before Congress once again to undermine Biden’s cease-fire proposal. Yet Biden, who places such a premium on personal relationships, refuses to budge.”

Duss said that by refusing to control U.S. arms supplies as a means of pressure on Israel, Biden gave Netanyahu free rein to continue the war. Biden was able to call Netanyahu two days after the assassination and promise to defend Israel against any threat from Iran and its proxy groups. If there was any private rebuke or disapproval, the public reading of the call obscured it.

Biden then expressed his frustration, telling reporters: “We have the basis for a cease-fire. They should act now.” Asked whether Haniyeh’s death had ruined the prospect of a deal, the president said: “It didn’t help.”

The killing is yet another indicator of the Biden administration’s inability to leverage its security relationship with a politician whose methods and goals it does not share, and whom it suspects wants his political rival to triumph in the November U.S. election. Moreover, both Trump and Netanyahu share a common goal: to wield the political power necessary to avoid criminal prosecution.

At stake is also the effectiveness of Israel's long-term military strategy to dismantle Hamas, including the use of assassinations on foreign soil.

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Haniyeh is the third prominent member of Iran-backed military groups to be killed in recent weeks, following the assassination last month of Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza and the attack on Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, in response to the killing of 12 children and teenagers in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.

In total, according to ACLED, a US-based NGO, Israel has carried out 34 attacks that have resulted in the deaths of at least 39 commanders and senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, Syria and Iran over the past 10 months.

Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, describes the killings as a tactical victory but a strategic defeat. Haniyeh was a proponent of Palestinian reconciliation and a ceasefire. So removing him from the equation impacts the internal power dynamics within the group by strengthening hardliners, at least during the current term, he said.

Netanyahu, Lovatt added, is weakening Haniyeh by backtracking on agreed positions and loudly declaring that as soon as the hostages are released, we will resume fighting Hamas.

Nicholas Hopton, a former British ambassador to Tehran, said he feared the assassination was part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the hopes of Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, of rebuilding relations with the West.

“You can overstate what a reformer means in Iran: he went to parliament wearing an IRGC uniform, but he was going to try to build relations with the West,” Hopton said. “I think the supreme leader is deeply skeptical about the scope of this, but he thinks it’s worth a try. Pezeshkian could now be immediately blocked, and I think that’s part of what the Israeli assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran was designed to do.”

In Iran, Mohammad Salari, secretary general of the Islamic Solidarity party, said the assassination should not be seen as the departure of a political figure. The hidden aim was to overshadow the new government's policy of engagement and de-escalation, he explained.

Netanyahu will make every effort to put obstacles in the way of achieving a balanced foreign policy for Iran, improving relations with European countries and managing tensions with the United States, just as in the nuclear negotiations.

So when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened open battle on all fronts, Lovatt said he likely meant a multifaceted response designed not to trigger a regional war, but to go further than the retaliation launched by Iran alone in April. Remarkably, Nasrallah added an appeal to the White House: If anyone in the world really wants to prevent a more serious regional war, they should pressure Israel to stop its aggression against Gaza.

So far, this call has remained unanswered.

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