Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, hired Iranian security agents to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was staying, Britain’s the Telegraph reported.
The original plan was to assassinate Haniyeh in May when he attended the funeral of Iran’s former president Ebrahim Raisi, it said.
The operation didn’t go ahead due to the large crowds inside the building and the high possibility of its failure, two Iranian officials told The Telegraph.
Instead, the two agents placed explosive devices in three rooms of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) guesthouse in north Tehran where Haniyeh might stay.
The agents were seen moving stealthily as they entered and exited multiple rooms within minutes, according to the officials who have CCTV footage of the building.
The operatives are then said to have snuck out of the country but had a source still in Iran. At 2am on Wednesday, they detonated the explosives from abroad in the room where Haniyeh was staying.
The explosion killed Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“They are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit,” an official within the IRGC told the Telegraph from Tehran, referring to an IRGC unit responsible for the safety of high-ranking officials.
He said: “Upon further investigation, they discovered additional explosive devices in two other rooms.”
A second official within the elite military forces of the IRGC told the Telegraph: “This is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach.”
Haniyeh's death was one in a series of killings of senior Hamas figures as the war in Gaza between the Palestinian militants and Israel nears its 11th month and concern grows that the conflict is spreading across the Middle East.
Hamas and Iran have both accused Israel of carrying out the assassination and have pledged to retaliate against their foe.
Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the death.
