Ismail Haniyeh was widely regarded as the leader of Hamas (Image: Getty)
Iran yesterday issued a stark warning to Israel that it will seek ‘harsh’ revenge after the assassination of Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
The terror chief was killed in an Israeli air-strike as he slept while he was visiting the Iranian capital as an invited guest of the government.
But the attack sparked fury across Iran, with the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei immediately vowing to seek revenge against Israel for carrying out such a daring assassination on its soil.
Khamenei warned that avenging his death was now “Tehran’s duty”, adding that Israel had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment”.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian added that he will make Israel “regret” the “cowardly” killing of Haniyeh, adding that Iran would “defend its territorial integrity, honour pride and dignity”.
In a statement, the Iranian president described Haniyeh as a “brave leader”.
The Hamas political leader, who is based in Qatar, was visiting Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s presidential inauguration ceremony.
A spokesman for Hamas, the Palestinian proscribed terror group, also promised vengeance for its leader’s death,
While Jerusalem did not immediately claim responsibility, Haniyeh’s death came just hours after Israel also killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, in a strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
As fears of a regional mass escalation in the wake of what were being dubbed ‘assassinations’ grew, the United States government called for calm.
The White House cautioned that “all-out war” between Hezbollah and Israel or Iran and Israel was not now inevitable.
Joe Biden’s administration instead moved quickly to quell growing fears of a widening Middle East conflict after the two targeted killings.
Israel’s earlier attack on the Lebanese capital was seen as revenge for the deadly weekend rocket assault by Hezbollah on the Golan Heights which left 12 young people dead.
On a day of fast moving developments, the most significant death of the campaign was announced when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran in the early hours of yesterday, the group confirmed.
In a statement released yesterday, Hamas said Haniyeh, 62, died in an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran at about 2am local time.
But a number of other senior Hamas figures, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, quickly described Haniyeh’s death as an “assassination” and vowed to retaliate.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said the cause of the “incident” was not immediately clear but was “being investigated”.
According to Hamas, Haniyeh died after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian President Pezeshkian who was sworn in on Tuesday.
Hamas, the Palestinian group controlling Gaza, said Haniyeh was “killed in a treacherous Zionist raid”.
The group’s political bureau member Musa Abu Marzuk said it was a “cowardly act” and one which “will not go unanswered”; while another senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the group will “continue on its path”.
“This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas and the will of our people and achieve fake goals,” Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Israel is yet to respond or issue a statement.
But Haniyeh was widely considered Hamas’s overall leader.
He was a prominent member of the group’s movement in the late 1980s and was imprisoned by Israel for three years in 1989 as it cracked down on the first Palestinian uprising.
He was then exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders.
Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister in 2006 by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won the most seats in national elections, but he was dismissed a year later after the group ousted Mr Abbas’ Fatah party from the Gaza Strip in a week of deadly violence.
Haniyeh rejected his sacking as “unconstitutional”, stressing that his government “would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people”, and continued to rule in Gaza.
He was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017.
In 2018, the US Department of State designated Haniyeh a terrorist. He had lived in Qatar for the past several years.
Meanwhile, the targeted killing of Hezbollah chief Shukr in Beirut by the Israelis also sparked an angry backlash in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said Shukr was the target of an “intelligence-based elimination”.
Hezbollah did not immediately confirm his death, but admitted Shukhr was in a building that was hit at the time.
Israeli officials claimed he was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 people, mostly children. Hezbollah has denied any involvement in that attack.
In a statement released yesterday, Hezbollah said the rubble was still being removed from the site of the building in Daniyeh – a stronghold of the armed group which was “still waiting for the result”.
It said a number of people had been killed in the attack.
But Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned “blatant Israeli aggression”.
He described it as a “criminal act” in a “series of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law.”
However, in a brief post on social media after the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant simply said: “Hezbollah crossed the red line”.
