Senior Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Assassinated in Iran by ‘Israeli Airstrike’

By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated on Tuesday while visiting Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president.

Hamas said Haniyeh was killed “in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran” after the ceremony.

 

From Press TV, “Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran”:

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, has been killed in an attack in the Iranian capital Tehran.

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) announced in a statement on Wednesday morning that Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed when their residence was hit in Tehran.

The assassination saw a projectile hitting a residence allocated to war veterans in the Iranian capital at 02:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday (2230 GMT on Tuesday).

The IRGC statement said the attack is under investigation and the results will be announced later in the day.

“No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack,” the AP reports.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Tuesday after Haniyeh’s assassination that Hamas can outlast the deaths of any of its leaders.

“We are waging an open war to liberate Jerusalem and are ready to pay any price,” Abu Zuhri said.

Israel assassinated Haniyeh’s three sons and four of his grandchildren earlier this year.

“I thank Allah for this honor that He bestowed upon us through the martyrdom of my three sons and grandchildren,” Haniyeh said in a statement at the time. “With this pain and blood, we create hope, a future, and freedom for our people, our cause, and our nation.”

Reuters reported Tuesday that the “tough-talking Haniyeh” was seen as “the more moderate face of Hamas.”

Appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to talk to Hamas’ ally Iran.

[…] For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed him as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the Oct. 7 attack.

While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves “drowning in the sands of Gaza”, he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.

Israel regards the entire Hamas leadership as terrorists, and has accused Haniyeh, Meshaal and others of continuing to “pull the strings of the Hamas terror organisation”.

But how much Haniyeh knew about the Oct. 7 assault beforehand is not clear. The plan, drawn up by the Hamas military council in Gaza, was such a closely guarded secret that some Hamas officials seemed shocked by its timing and scale.

Killing your opposing negotiator is an interesting way to shut down negotiations.

Israel assassinated Hezbollah senior military commander Fuad Shukr earlier on Tuesday in an airstrike on a suburb in Beirut, Lebanon.