IRAN’S Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said yesterday that the Islamic Republic and the Resistance Front will avenge the murder of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, by an Israeli death squad, working on behalf of the US ruling class.
Qalibaf continued: ‘May God have mercy upon the brave leader of the Palestinian resistance, the courageous fighter and wise mentor, protector of the dignity of the resilient Palestinian nation, and guardian of Islamic values, the martyr of al-Quds, Haj Ismail Haniyeh.’
He added: ‘The two nations of Iran and Palestine are grieving over this great tragedy together. Iran and the resistance front will avenge the blood of their martyred brother.’
Haniyeh was killed in a dawn attack on his residence in Tehran. He was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Following the assassination, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, warned the Israeli regime of a ‘harsh response’, saying it is the Islamic Republic’s duty to avenge the blood of the Palestinian resistance leader.
He defiantly added: ‘The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our homeland and left us bereaved, but it also set the ground for a harsh punishment for itself.’
A former Lebanese lawmaker, Naser Kandeel, said yesterday that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to the US featured coordination between Tel Aviv and Washington concerning assassination operations against senior resistance figures.
He remarked in a post on X on Wednesday, referring to the last week’s visit to Washington by the Israeli prime minister, which he said was shortly followed by the assassination by the Israeli military against Fuad Shukr, a senior commander of the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
Kandeel wrote that ‘The outcome of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington’ was the ‘Coordination of the assassination operations of leaders between American and Israeli intelligence.’
The new mediation terms, Hamas said, represent ‘a retreat’ from an earlier draft communicated by mediators. The statement was made after Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators met with Israeli negotiators in Rome on Sunday in the latest push for a truce or ceasefire.
Hamas has accepted a UN Security Council resolution passed last month which said: ‘If the negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will continue as long as negotiations continue.’
Israel’s war on Gaza, now nearing its tenth month, has destroyed large swaths of the besieged territory.
Israel has killed more than 39,300 people, the great majority of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023.
Now the US and UK ruling classes have given up on any prospect for a deal, instead they are proceeding with a plan for assassinations and the destruction of the National Liberation Movements in the Middle East.
Workers in the US, the UK and the EU now have a vital and decisive role to play.
They must demand that the UK, US and EU regimes must be made to recognise the State of Palestine and withdraw all US and UK forces from the Middle East to allow the Palestinian masses to decide, free from murderous threats and actions by the imperialist powers, to establish the State of Palestine and to use the oil wealth of the region for the benefit of the people that live there.
This means that the US, UK and EU trade unions must call general strikes to bring down the capitalist regimes and bring in Workers Governments that will set out to see that the oil wealth of the Middle East is used for the benefit of the people of the region, and not to create a legion of millionaires and billionaires who are good for nothing except to enslave the people of the region, and to keep a permanent grip on its vast oil wealth.
We must demand:
Forward to the State of Palestine! We must drive the imperialist death squads out of the Middle East for good! We must go forward to a Socialist Middle East, a Socialist United States of Europe, and a socialist USA, to put an end to the robbery of oil wealth that is taking place in the Middle East on a daily basis.
Forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution!
