عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas Leader on Israel’s Hit List Since Oct. 7, Is Killed in Airstrike in Tehran

In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, shakes hands with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the start of their meeting at the President's office in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, shakes hands with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the start of their meeting at the President's office in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
TT
TT

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas Leader on Israel’s Hit List Since Oct. 7, Is Killed in Airstrike in Tehran

In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, shakes hands with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the start of their meeting at the President's office in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, shakes hands with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the start of their meeting at the President's office in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader in exile who landed on Israel’s hit list after the armed group staged its surprise Oct. 7 attacks, was killed in an airstrike in the Iranian capital early Wednesday. He was 62. 

Hamas said Haniyeh was killed at his residence in Tehran in an Israeli airstrike after he attended the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new president. Israel has not commented on the accusation. 

Haniyeh's death makes him the latest Hamas official to be killed by Israel since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, when militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. The devastating Israel-Hamas war the attacks set off has become the deadliest and longest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in Gaza. 

While Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar is believed to have been the mastermind of the attacks, Haniyeh, seen as a more moderate force in Hamas, lauded them as a humiliating blow to Israel's aura of invincibility. 

“The Al-Aqsa flood was an earthquake that struck the heart of the Zionist entity and has made major changes at the world level,” Haniyeh said in a speech in Iran during the funeral of late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in May. 

“We will continue the resistance against this enemy until we liberate our land, all our land,” Haniyeh said. 

Hours after the Oct. 7 attacks, Haniyeh appeared in a video released by Hamas leading prayers with other top Hamas officials. They thanked God for the success of the attack, which blasted through Israel's vaunted defenses and resulted in the deadliest assault in Israel’s history. 

Michael Milshtein, a Hamas expert at Tel Aviv University, said Haniyeh had a commanding role in the group's foreign policy and diplomacy, but was less involved in military affairs. 

“He was responsible for propaganda, for diplomatic relations, but he was not very powerful,” said Milshtein, a former military intelligence officer. “From time to time, Sinwar even laughed and joked: ‘He’s the more moderate, sophisticated leader, but he doesn’t understand anything about warfare.’” 

Still, Israel pledged to target all of Hamas’ leaders following the attacks and has gradually worked to fulfill that promise. 

Haniyeh was also under the eye of the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor sought arrest warrants against him and two other Hamas leaders, Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Similar requests were issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

Haniyeh lived in self-imposed exile in Qatar since 2019 and the threats against him did not prevent him from traveling. He visited Türkiye and Iran throughout the war. From Doha, he was involved in negotiations meant to bring about a ceasefire and free the hostages. 

His role in Hamas’ leadership also cost him his closest relatives. In April, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three of Haniyeh’s sons, after which he accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” 

Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed as well as his sister in a separate strike last month. 

Haniyeh, who was born in Gaza’s urban Shati refugee camp on Jan. 29, 1963, joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987. He served as an aid to Ahmad Yassin, the group’s founder, and rose throughout the years until he became its top political leader, replacing Khaled Meshaal in 2017. 

Haniyeh was deeply religious and studied Arabic literature at university. He was known for delivering lengthy speeches using flowery language to his supporters while serving as prime minister in Gaza. 

Hani Masri, a veteran Palestinian analyst who met Haniyeh several times, said the late leader’s personality was a natural fit for the head of the group’s political bureau in Doha. He described him as having been sociable and well spoken. 

Haniyeh, like thousands of other Palestinians, was detained by Israeli authorities in 1989 for being a member of Hamas and spent three years in jail before he was deported to Lebanon in 1992 with a group of top Hamas officials and founders. He later returned to the Gaza Strip following the 1993 interim peace accords, which were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. 

Haniyeh assumed the position of prime minister in the Palestinian government after Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. He presided over the gravest crisis in the Palestinian leadership in its history, which continues until today. 

Hamas violently overran Gaza in 2007, routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and installing itself as ruler of the tiny coastal enclave, with Haniyeh as prime minister. 

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

Strike on Western Iraq Kills Seven Security Personnel

Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Strike on Western Iraq Kills Seven Security Personnel

Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)

A strike on a base in western Iraq killed seven security personnel, the defense ministry said Wednesday, a day after an attack on the same base targeted the Popular Mobilization Forces.

"This resulted in the death of seven of our heroic fighters and the injury of 13 others," the ministry said of the strike in Anbar province, saying it specifically targeted the base's military healthcare clinic.

Rescue operations were ongoing, it added.

The base hosts Iraqi police, soldiers from the regular army and PMF, a security official told AFP.

It was hit by a deadly strike on Tuesday that the former paramilitaries blamed on the United States.

Iraq said late on Tuesday it would summon the US charge d'affaires and the Iranian ambassador after deadly strikes blamed on their countries, as Iraqi authorities granted the targeted groups the "right to respond".

Iraq has been pulled into the war sparked by US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, and which has since engulfed much of the region.

Iraq has long been a proxy battleground for the United States and Iran, and has struggled to balance diplomatic ties with both countries.

Since the war began, pro-Iran armed groups have claimed responsibility for attacks on US interests in Iraq and across the region, while strikes have also targeted these groups, including state-linked positions.

In the statement from the prime minister's office, however, Iraq granted former paramilitaries within the official armed forces the right to "respond to military attacks" by drones and aircraft that targeted their headquarters.

Arab World

Spanish PM Says Israel Wants to Inflict on Lebanon ‘Same Destruction’ as in Gaza

A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Spanish PM Says Israel Wants to Inflict on Lebanon ‘Same Destruction’ as in Gaza

A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "seeks to inflict the same level of damage and destruction" on Lebanon as Israeli ‌forces had ‌wrought on ‌the Gaza ⁠Strip, Spanish Prime ⁠Minister Pedro Sanchez told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Sanchez, who appeared before the ⁠lower house ‌to ‌explain his government's stance ‌against the ‌US-Israeli war on Iran, added that Iran's new Supreme ‌Leader was more hardline than his predecessor.

"Mojtaba ⁠Khamenei ⁠is an equally dictatorial and even more bloodthirsty tyrant than his father," Sanchez said.

Sanchez warned that the Middle East war presented a "far worse" scenario than the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"This is not the same scenario as the illegal war in Iraq. We are facing something far worse. Much worse. With a potential impact that is far broader and far deeper," he added.

Arab World

Syria on Alert to Protect its Borders with Iraq, Wary of Intervening in Lebanon

Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Syria on Alert to Protect its Borders with Iraq, Wary of Intervening in Lebanon

Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)

The Syrian armed forces said they were on full alert in wake of a rocket attack from Iraq against a Syrian military base in the Hasakeh province.

The army stressed that it will perform its duties in defending Syrian territories and deterring any attack.

Iraq arrested four people in connection with an earlier rocket attack launched against a military base in neighboring Syria, officials said late Tuesday.

Monday's attack targeted a northeastern Syrian military base in Hasakeh that had until recently hosted US forces with an international anti-ISIS coalition.

These are the first arrests announced in Iraq related to the Middle East conflict that broke out on February 28.

Monday’s attack took place hour after the bust of an Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) cell in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province.

A Syrian security source told local radio that investigations are ongoing with the detainees to determine what they were planning. He revealed that they were collecting information and smuggling weapons in the area.

Assistant defense minister for the eastern region Sipan Hamo held Iraqi authorities fully and directly responsible for the attack on Hasakeh.

In a post on the X platform, he called on Baghdad to take the necessary measures to prevent a similar attack from taking place in the future.

The attack reflects the Iraqi authorities’ “inability” to impose control over their territories and failure “to prevent them from being used to launch attacks that threaten Syria’s security and safety,” he added.

Border with Lebanon

On the Syrian-Lebanese border, sources close to the Damascus government spoke of signs of an internal Lebanese escalation that is a “source of alarm for Syria.”

The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat: “It will be difficult for Syria to steer clear of any possible internal unrest in Lebanon. It will work on preventing any threat to Syria’s security.”

Hezbollah leaders had warned Lebanese authorities in recent days that the Iran-backed party would adopt a different approach towards them when the war is over.

Hezbollah has been critical of the government for banning its military operations, calling for its disarmament, calling for negotiations with Israel and recently for expelling the Iranian ambassador to Beirut.

Syrian Defense Ministry sources told Asharq Al-Awsat said Damascus was weighing three options. The first favors waiting for the end of the war before acting in Syria’s interests; the second believes in striking Hezbollah during the war because it is hostile to the Syrian people and its illegal weapons are tied to Iran and so, their presence is a threat to Lebanon and Syria; the third calls for coordination with Arab and regional parties, led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye, before any intervention can happen.

The unrest along the borders with Lebanon and Iraq will prompt Damascus to increase its coordination with those countries to prevent the smuggling of weapons and drugs and dry up the sources of support for Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias.

Military expert Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the possibility of Syria joining the conflict through intervening in Lebanon “is a very great challenge” and will have dire consequences for the security of the region and Syria that Iran can exploit.

Perhaps Iran is trying to lure Syria into the conflict “given that Tehran has been impatiently waiting for a moment to unleash its fury on the new Syria that expelled its forces, which marked the beginning of the end of the Iranian expansionist project in the region,” he added.

Al-Oqaidi said, however, it would be wise for Syria to stay out of the war. It should limit its role to securing borders and security coordination with the relevant parties.

He predicted that Syria would stay on the side and avoid becoming involved in a conflict that does not benefit it.

The Iranian and Zionist projects only have ill intentions towards the region and Syria, he warned.

The Defense Ministry sources noted the Lebanese government’s recent decision to ban Hezbollah’s military and security operations, saying it was a positive sign.

The Syrian state will “strike with force any attempt by the party to cross the border. At the same time, it is avoiding escalation and assuring Lebanese parties,” they added, underlining the importance of stability in Syria and Lebanon and the need to avert sectarian wars.