Haniyeh’s Assassination: How Did Israel Infiltrate Iran’s Stronghold?

This photo shows the Hamas chief's residence in Tehran where he was assassinated. (Social media)
This photo shows the Hamas chief's residence in Tehran where he was assassinated. (Social media)
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Haniyeh’s Assassination: How Did Israel Infiltrate Iran’s Stronghold?

This photo shows the Hamas chief's residence in Tehran where he was assassinated. (Social media)
This photo shows the Hamas chief's residence in Tehran where he was assassinated. (Social media)

Israel revealed on Sunday new details about the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.

Days after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted Israel's responsibility for Haniyeh's killing, Israel’s Channel 12 said the assassination was carried out with a “precision bomb” placed inside Haniyeh's room and controlled remotely.

The report contradicted Iranian and Hamas reports that claimed Haniyeh was killed by a “short-range projectile.”

It said Israeli agents placed an improvised explosive device in Haniyeh’s room near his bed before the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on July 31.

The channel said a broken air conditioning unit nearly scuttled Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, who appeared on the verge of changing rooms before staff at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ guesthouse in Tehran managed to fix the cooling system.

The Israeli decision to take out Haniyeh came shortly after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, when the movement's leader was placed somewhere at the top of a list compiled by senior intelligence officials. It was only a matter of when, Channel 12 said.

Tamir Heyman, former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, told the channel that for several years Haniyeh had been a well-known figure to the Israeli public, but was not considered a prime target. “The main targets of Israel were military figures, such as Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif,” he said.

But the dramatic shift that turned Haniyeh into a target were events that followed the October 7 attack.

In late January, Israel uncovered documents seized in a tunnel used by Sinwar, proving the deep military coordination between the two men.

Investigative journalist Ronen Bergman said Haniyeh played, in general, a key role in the Hamas military operations, and in particular, in the preparation for the October 7 attack.

How did Israel infiltrate the Iranian stronghold?

The report said the options for where to kill Haniyeh were Qatar, Türkiye, Russia and Iran — the four countries frequented by the Hamas leader.

It explained that Haniyeh could not be assassinated in Qatar as this would have harmed the hostage mediation efforts.

Israel also feared a furious reaction from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and similarly did not want to anger Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaving Iran as the most suitable option, the channel said.

The fact that Haniyeh stayed repeatedly in the same IRGC guesthouse in the luxurious northern Tehran neighborhood of Saadat Abad made the operation easier to plan.

However, he was guarded as a guest of honor by the IRGC’s top personal security team, requiring a deep level of infiltration in order to pull off the assassination.

Channel 12 said the Haniyeh assassination was at an even higher level than the pager operation that targeted Hezbollah members in Lebanon in September.

“We penetrated the inside and outside of the most guarded Iranian facility,” Iran expert Beni Sabti of the Institute for National Security Studies told the channel.

It reported that planning the operation took months, with unnamed sources describing the mission as “one of the most complex and sensitive operations.”

Israeli agents installed an improvised explosive device in Haniyeh’s room near his bed. The IED was slightly larger than Israel had planned.

Shortly before the planned detonation, the AC unit in Haniyeh’s room broke down, and the Hamas leader left his room to request assistance.

Citing a source familiar with its planning, Channel 12 said the Hamas leader was gone for so long that Israel feared that he was being moved to a different room, which would have scuttled the entire operation.

After some time, though, the AC unit was fixed and Haniyeh returned to his room.

At 1:30 am, there was a huge explosion in the compound.

“After about a minute, the medical team declares him dead, and then [now-Hamas leader] Khalil al-Hayya enters and sees his colleague lying dead and bleeding on the ground, and he himself falls to his knees and bursts into tears,” said Bergman. “It's a dramatic moment.”

Who assisted the Mossad?

The precision and success of the operation reportedly sowed panic in the Iranian leadership, and to this day, and the question of who assisted the Mossad in the operation remains.

According to both Bergman and Heyman, the operation was complex and therefore, could not have been carried out without significant help from within Iran or Hamas.

“This requires a whole network of execution capabilities,” emphasized Heyman. “It probably involves some people who betrayed their country or betrayed their mission and cooperated to allow this to happen.”

On Sunday, Hamas in a statement denied Israeli reports about the assassination of the former head of its political bureau.

It said joint investigation between the movement’s security apparatus and Iran’s security apparatuses showed that Haniyeh was killed by a guided missile weighing 7.5 kg that directly targeted his mobile phone.

“The claims made by the occupation regime are merely a desperate attempt to divert public opinion from this crime, which clearly violates Iran’s sovereignty,” Hamas said.



Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
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Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)

Fighting in Sudan's Kordofan region that has killed hundreds and ongoing violence in Darfur — the epicenters of the country's conflict — have worsened Sudan's humanitarian crisis, with aid workers warning of limited access to assistance.

The United Nations said more than 450 civilians, including at least 35 children, were killed during the weekend of July 12 in attacks in villages surrounding the town of Bara in North Kordofan province.

“The suffering in Kordofan deepens with each passing day,” Mercy Corps Country Director for Sudan Kadry Furany said in a statement shared with The Associated Press. “Communities are trapped along active and fast changing front lines, unable to flee, unable to access basic needs or lifesaving assistance.”

Sudan plunged into war after simmering tensions between the army and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, escalated to fighting in April 2023. The violence has killed at least 40,000 people and created one of the world’s worst displacement and hunger crises, according to humanitarian organizations. In recent months, much of the fighting has been concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

On Thursday, the UN human rights office confirmed that since July 10, the RSF has killed at least 60 civilians in the town of Bara, while civil society groups reported up to 300 people were killed, the office said.

A military airstrike on Thursday in Bara killed at least 11 people, all from the same family, according to the UN office. Meanwhile, between July 10 and 14, the army killed at least 23 civilians and injured over two dozen others after striking two villages in West Kordofan.

An aid worker with Mercy Corps said his brother was fatally shot on July 13 during an attack on the village of Um Seimima in El Obeid City in North Kordofan, Grace Wairima Ndungu, the group’s communications manager told AP.

Furany said that movement between the western and eastern areas of the Kordofan region is “practically impossible.”

The intensified fighting forced Mercy Corps to temporarily suspend operations in three out of four localities, with access beyond Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, now being in “serious doubt,” Furany said, as a safe sustained humanitarian corridor is needed.

Mathilde Vu, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who is often based in Port Sudan, told the AP that fighting has intensified in North Kordofan and West Kordofan over the past several months.

“A large number of villages are being destroyed, burned to the ground, people being displaced,” she said. “What is extremely worrying about the Kordofan is that there is very little information and not a lot of organizations are able to support. It is a complete war zone there.”

Marwan Taher, head of mission with humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, told the AP that military operations in Kordofan heightened insecurity, prompting scores of people to flee to Darfur, a region already in a dire humanitarian situation.

The NRC said that since April, Tawila has already received 379,000 people escaping violence in famine-hit Zamzam Camp and Al Fasher.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration recently reported that over 46,000 people were displaced from different areas in West Kordofan in May alone due to clashes between warring parties.

Taher said those fleeing El Fasher to Tawila walk long distances with barely enough clothes and little water, and sleep on the streets until they arrive at the area they want to settle in. The new wave of displacement has brought diseases, including measles, which began spreading in parts of Zalingi in Central Darfur in March and April as camps received people fleeing Kordofan.

Aid workers also warned about ongoing fighting in Darfur. Vu said there have been “uninterrupted campaigns of destruction” against civilians in North Darfur.
“In Darfur there’s been explicit targeting of civilians. There’s been explicit execution,” she said.

Shelling killed five children Wednesday in El Fasher in North Darfur, according to UN spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay. Meanwhile, between July 14 and 15, heavy rains and flooding displaced over 400 people and destroyed dozens of homes in Dar As Salam, North Darfur.

With a looming rainy season, a cholera outbreak and food insecurity, the situation in Darfur is “getting worse every day and that’s what war is,” said Taher.