Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran, Iran says

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.

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 on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.

Iran’s statement gave no details on how Haniyeh was killed. The New York Times was the first to report the incident. 

Iranian state television reported on his death early Wednesday, and analysts immediately began blaming Israel for the attack.

Israel itself did not immediately comment but it often doesn’t when it comes to assassination carried out by their Mossad intelligence agency.

Israel is suspected of running a yearslong assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and others associated with its atomic program. In 2020, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran.

Haniyeh, the overall political leader of Hamas, had not been in Gaza in years and spends most of his time in Qatar, where Hamas has its primary political office outside of Gaza. 

In April, three sons of Haniyeh were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, according to relatives and Hamas media channels. At the time, Haniyeh himself acknowledged the deaths. Hamas said the strike hit a vehicle near a home belonging to the Haniyeh family.  

Some of Hamas’ most senior leaders are still believed to be in Gaza, and they remain on Israel’s wanted list. At the top of that list is Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in the Gaza Strip and one of the founders of the group’s military wing of the terrorist organization, the Al-Qassam Brigades.    

There was no immediate reaction from the White House. 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.

CIA Director Bill Burns was in Rome on Sunday to meet with senior Israel, Qatari and Egyptian officials in the latest round of talks. Separately, Brett McGurk, the White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, is in the region for talks with U.S. partners.

In its campaign since the Israel-Hamas war began, Israel has killed more than 39,360 Palestinians and wounded more than 90,900, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.