Former Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an explosive device that was secretly smuggled into his guesthouse in Tehran, and not by an airstrike, The New York Times reported and The Jerusalem Post has independently confirmed.
The bomb was hidden in June and used cutting-edge remote technology as has been used in the killing of Iran nuclear chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, according to the report and the Post’s sources.
Moreover, the Post has learned that despite reports that Haniyeh was more flexible in hostage deal talks than Hamas Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar, in fact, recently, Haniyeh has often been more of an obstacle to a final deal, such that his removal could make a deal more likely.
Furthermore, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were directly responsible for security at the guesthouse in a large compound called Neshat in a high-end neighborhood of northern Tehran.
Haniyeh has visited Tehran numerous times and stayed at the same guest house all or most of those times, providing the assassins a clear target to plan for.
Iran has accused Israel of ordering the assassination and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad Director David Barnea previously threatened Haniyeh and other top Hamas leaders, but Jerusalem has not taken official credit for killing Haniyeh as it did for the recent killings of Hamas and Hezbollah military chiefs Mohammed Deif and Fuad Shukr.
It appears that the IRGC or those close to it initially circulated rumors that the attack was a drone strike as this could shift more responsibility for the failure of Haniyeh’s security to other bodies like the Air Force.
Similarly, the military and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, in competition with the IRGC, would want the IRGC to be held responsible for failing to detect an internally planted bomb. Barnea is known to be fascinated by operations involving remote cutting-edge technological solutions. Haniyeh visited Tehran several times and stayed at the same guest house most visits, providing the assassins with a clear target to aim at.
IDF confirms Haniyeh wasn't killed by airstrike
IDF Chief Spokesmen R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari on Thursday said that Israel did not carry out any airstrikes anywhere in the Middle East the night that Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr was killed – which means by process of elimination that Haniyeh was not killed by a drone.
The Post asked but was unable to clarify why the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, who was right next door to Haniyeh, was spared.
One possibility is that it was not known that he would for sure be there and the bomb was set to only kill Haniyeh inside his room so as to avoid killing other unpredictable guests.
Another possibility is that to date Israel has not been killing top Islamic Jihad officials overseas as much as Hamas. This could be part of some broader strategy to punish Hamas the most as the “sovereign” of Gaza and to spend less of Israel’s finite resources on Islamic Jihad as a more minor player, even if ideologically Islamic Jihad is even closer to Iran than Hamas.
Until Hamas’s October 7 raid, Israel had put much greater emphasis on killing top Islamic Jihad leaders in recent years and had left most top Hamas leaders in Gaza untouched.
In the more distant past and prior to the 2014 Gaza conflict, Israel had killed many top Hamas leaders in Gaza and Jerusalem continued to order assassinations of Hamas officials overseas from time to time.