The top political leader of Hamas was assassinated yesterday in a stunning Israeli strike in Iran that has left the Palestinian group vowing to take revenge and could trigger yet more chaos in the Middle East.
Ismail Haniyeh, who had escaped the horrors of the war in Gaza while residing in Qatar, travelled to Iran to attend the inauguration of new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.
But Israel’s Defence Forces seized the chance to hit Haniyeh and conducted a daring missile strike on his residence in Tehran just hours after the event, killing the Hamas leader and a security guard.
The assassination, confirmed by both Hamas and Iranian authorities, marks the most high-profile killing since October 7 and could prove to be a tipping point in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group.
It has also sparked concerns that Hamas’ regional allies – Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels – could seek to hit back against Israel, spreading yet more violence in the region.
The National Security Council in Iran said today that ‘the elimination of Haniyeh crossed the red lines, Israel will bear a great price’.
Iran sent a barrage of missiles and drones to attack Israel earlier this year after Tel-Aviv struck the Iranian embassy in Syria back in April.
The assassination of Hamas’ chief and their ally at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards residence in the capital city constitutes a humiliating blow for the Islamic Republic and will almost certainly precipitate a harsh retaliation.
Meanwhile, international observers have sounded the alarm that Hamas could pull out of months of negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza as the Palestinian death toll nears 40,000.
Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2024
Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, had been in the capital city as Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in as President of the nation
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh hours before the latter’s death in Tehran, Iran July 30, 2024
Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh attends the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s 9th President, Massoud Pezeshkian at the Iranian Parliament in Tehran
‘Brother leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) president,’ Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas political bureau member Musa Abu Marzuk vowed: ‘The assassination of leader Ismail Haniyeh is a cowardly act and will not go unanswered.’
Sami Abu Zuhri, another Hamas official, added: ‘We are engaged in an open war to liberate Jerusalem and we are ready to pay various prices.’
Haniyeh was widely considered Hamas’s political chief and has been a prominent member of the movement since 1980.
He also briefly served as Palestinian prime minister after being appointed in 2006 but was dismissed a year later after Hamas ousted rival Fatah Party.
Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017 and the US Department of State designated him a terrorist in 2018. He left the Gaza Strip to seek refuge in Qatar in 2019 and has presided over the political machinations of the group from afar ever since.
He was said to maintain good relations with the heads of the various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas, to consolidate Hamas’ power base in Gaza.
Haniyeh’s son, Abdul Salam Ismail Haniyeh, said his father had ‘achieved what he wished for’.
‘We are in a state of continuous revolution and struggle against the occupation,’ he said in a statement.
‘The resistance will not end with the assassination of the leadership, and Hamas will continue to resist until liberation.’
A spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthi rebel group said: ‘Targeting him is a heinous terrorist crime and a flagrant violation of laws and ideal values,’ prompting fears that the group will launch renewed missile and drone attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh attends Iran’s new President, Masoud Pezeshkian’s swearing-in ceremony at the parliament in Tehran
Israel has not commented on the strike on Tehran, other than to say it ‘doesn’t respond to reports in the foreign media’.
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But international observers are concerned Haniyeh’s assassination will only serve to ratchet up tension in the region and ruin months of progress in peace talks to end the war in Gaza.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Haniyeh’s killing, calling it a ‘cowardly act and dangerous development’, while Russia denounced the strike as an ‘unacceptable political assassination’.
‘This will only lead to a further escalation of tensions,’ Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Bogdanov told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency, while Konstantin Kosachev, the vice-president of Russia’s upper house Federation Council, said he expected a ‘sudden escalation of mutual hatred in the Near East’.
‘The most difficult period of confrontations is beginning in the region,’ he wrote on Telegram.
Hours before the strike on Haniyeh, Israel carried out a rare attack in the Lebanese capital Beirut that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander who was allegedly behind a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Hezbollah said Wednesday that it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was struck.
Shukur was seen as a ‘senior adviser’ to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who played ‘a central role’ in the deadly 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
The U.S. and other nations had already been scrambling to prevent the Golan Heights strike from spiraling into an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah when word came of the dramatic assassination of Hamas’ top political leader Haniyeh in Tehran.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would work to try to ease tensions but said the US would help defend Israel if it were attacked.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala and Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh attend Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian’s swearing-in ceremony at the parliament in Tehran, Iran, July 30, 2024.
A man watches the news on a tv after Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting his residence in the Iranian capital Tehran, Iran on July 31, 2024
Israel had vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.
Haniyeh had vowed to fight Israel to the end, with a Hamas statement quoting him as saying that the Palestinian cause has ‘costs’ and ‘we are ready for these costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, and for the sake of God Almighty, and for the sake of the dignity of this nation.’
At least ten members of Haniyeh’s family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier this year, which included his sister.
The strike hit the Haniyeh family home in Al-Shati refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, last month.
Pictures show how the building was reduced to rubble, with rescuers working at the scene.
The victims were extracted and taken to the local hospital, where white body bags were laid out on the ground and distraught mourners seen gathering.
That attack came just weeks after Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in an Israeli airstrike on their car nearby.
Before their deaths, Haniyeh was believed to have had 13 sons and daughters. The Qatar-based Hamas leader said at the time said that about 60 members of his family had been killed since the war with Israel broke out on October 7.
Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh attends the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s 9th President, Massoud Pezeshkian at the Iranian Parliament in Tehran, Iran on July 30, 2024
Haniyeh, center, flashes a victory after the conclusion of the swearing-in ceremony of newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday – hours before he was killed
A man stands in the rubble of the house of the sister of Ismail Haniyeh after it was razed by Israeli bombardment
Bodies of ten people, including the sister of Haniyeh, are brought to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after the Israeli attack on the Al-Shati refugee camp
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement on Haniyeh’s death: ‘This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas and the will of our people and achieve fake goals. We confirm that this escalation will fail to achieve its objectives.
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‘Hamas is a concept and an institution and not persons.
‘Hamas will continue on this path regardless of the sacrifices and we are confident of victory.’
Since the October 7 attack, more than 39,360 Palestinians have been killed and more than 90,900 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The apparent assassination comes at a precarious time, as the Biden administration has tried to push Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary cease-fire and hostage-release deal.
It also comes after US forces carried out a strike in Iraq on Tuesday in self defence, after tensions rose when an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Hezbollah’s most senior commander.
The strike in Iraq hit a base south of Baghdad used by Iran’s Popular Mobilization Forces and killed four members of the group, wounding four others.
U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, said the United States carried out an airstrike in Musayib, located in Babil province, but did not provide more details.
Tuesday’s action was the first known US strike in Iraq since February, when the U.S. military launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
File image of festivalgoers fleeing as Hamas gunmen storm the Nova music festival on October 7 last year. People fled in their cars and on foot. Many were killed
The destroyed top floors of an eight storey building in Beirut hit by an Israeli strike that targeted a top Hezbollah commander
Portraits of the children and youngsters who were killed two days ago, hang on the football stadium fence where a rocket landed, in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights
Israel also authored a strike on Beirut in Lebanon yesterday in direct retaliation for rocket fire from Hezbollah that killed 12 children over the weekend.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Wednesday that three people, including two children, had been killed in the strike, which also left 74 injured, updating an earlier toll.
Minutes after the explosions rocked Beirut, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant posted on social media site X that ‘Hezbollah crossed the red line’.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned what he called ‘blatant Israeli aggression’.