Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran by a short-range projectile with a warhead of about 7 kg, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday (August 3) as it vowed revenge on Israel who it blamed for the killing. The statement comes amid the mist over how the Palestinian leader was killed in the highly secured guesthouse on July 31. Earlier, a report claimed that Israeli spy agency Mossad hired Iranian agents to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where Haniyeh was staying to take him down.
The assassination has raised fears in the Middle East of an all-out war between Iran and its arch-enemy Israel with the Supreme leader of the former Ali Khamenei ordering a direct attack on the latter. The region braces for more turbulence and chaos besides Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and a worsening conflict in Lebanon.
What did Iran's Revolutionary Guards say?
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that the revenge for the killing of the Hamas leader will be “severe and at an appropriate time, place and manner”. It also blamed the "terrorist Zionist regime" of Israel for his death.
Both Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of carrying out the strike killing Haniyeh, hours after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president. However, Israel has neither accepted nor denied its responsibility behind the attack.
The statement by the elite Guards force also accused the "criminal U.S. government" of supporting the attack which Iranian media said was in a northern suburb of Tehran. Haniyeh was buried on Friday in Qatar, where he was based.
What did the earlier report claim?
According to a report by the UK-based The Telegraph, the agents were hired to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where Haniyeh was staying. This plan was concocted when the Hamas leader was attending the funeral of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash, in May.
However, the plan was scrapped because of large crowds outside the building and the high possibility of failure, two Iranian officials told the newspaper. The agents instead placed explosive devices in three rooms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) guesthouse in north Tehran where Haniyeh might stay. The agents were soon moving stealthily as they carried out the high-risk operation and exited multiple rooms within minutes.
The report claimed that the operatives snuck out of the country but had a source in Iran. At 2 am on Wednesday, they detonated the explosives planted in Haniyeh's room from abroad, killing the Hamas chief and one of his bodyguards. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian. “They are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit,” an official within the IRGC told the Telegraph from Tehran.
(With Reuters inputs)
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