The initial plan was to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh in May during his visit to Tehran for the funeral of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad enlisted Iranian security agents to plant explosives in a building in Tehran where armed Palestinian group Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was staying, The Telegraph reported.
The initial plan was to assassinate Haniyeh in May during his visit to Tehran for the funeral of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The operation was aborted due to overwhelming crowds, which posed a major risk of failure, according to two Iranian officials who spoke to The Telegraph.
Therefore, the operation had to be modified. Two agents, working under Mossad’s direction, placed explosive devices in three separate rooms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) guesthouse in northern Tehran. This location was strategically chosen as it was likely that Haniyeh would stay there.
Operation To Eliminate Haniyeh
According to The Telegraph, surveillance footage, held by Iranian officials, shows the agents moving stealthily, entering and exiting multiple rooms within minutes. After planting the devices, they exited Iran undetected but maintained a source within the country. In the early hours of Wednesday, at 2 am, the operatives remotely detonated the explosives in the room where Haniyeh was staying.
The explosion resulted in the death of Haniyeh, who was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. This assassination has been confirmed by officials within the IRGC, who now believe Mossad employed agents from the Ansar-al-Mahdi protection unit, the IRGC group responsible for safeguarding high-ranking officials inside and outside the country.
Ansar-al-Mahdi was established on 24 February 1982 before Operation Fath ol-Mobin in the Iran–Iraq War and was named after the twelfth Shia Imam, Al-Mahdi)
“This is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach,” an IRGC official told The Telegraph. A special working group has been established to devise strategies to mitigate the perception of this breach, the official added.
Potential Ramifications
IRAN’S SUPREME Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei performs prayer at the funeral of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Regardless of whether the Haniyeh hit was part of Israel’s response to the Majdal Shams murders, it demonstrated to all its enemies the Jewish state’s impressive capabilities. (credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA handout via Reuters)
In response to this breach, the IRGC is considering its options for retaliation. A direct strike on Tel Aviv, potentially involving Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, is reportedly a primary option under evaluation.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that upended Iran’s political and societal structure, the country has made a conscious effort to fan its influence across the Middle East with proxy groups.
The Quds Force, one of the five branches of the IRGC, which specializes in intelligence and covert operations, serves as the main point of contact for these proxy groups, providing them with weapons and training to solidify Iran’s regional agenda.
An unverified image of the IRGC guesthouse where Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed on July 31, 2024.
The timing of the assassination, coinciding with President Pezeshkian’s first day in office, has sparked suspicions about its intentionality. During his campaign, President Pezeshkian had pledged to move away from the Islamic Republic’s provocative policies and to restore Iran’s standing through dialogue.
President Pezeshkian, a seasoned lawmaker and cardiac surgeon, has long supported both domestic and international reforms in Iran. His win in the recent elections is viewed as a call for change since it follows a general unhappiness with the hardline policies of his predecessors. But the dynamics of Iranian politics, where hardliners still control the majority and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei retains ultimate authority, will put Mr Pezeshkian’s ability to carry out his vision to the test.
Update
the Iranian govt has arrested over two dozen people over suspected links with the murder. The arrested persons include senior intelligence officers, military officials and staff workers at the military-run guesthouse in Tehran where a pre-planted precision bomb killed Haniyeh and his bodyguard on 31 July, as per a report by the New York Times.
“The perception that Iran can neither protect its homeland nor its key allies could be fatal for the Iranian regime, because it basically signals to its foes that if they can’t topple the Islamic Republic, they can decapitate it,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group.
News agencies NDTV, NYT
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