Israel’s Mossad intelligence service hired Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents to plant explosives at the Tehran residence of slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to a report in the Telegraph.
The report said the original plan called for the assassination of Haniyeh when he visited Tehran in May to attend the funeral of President Ebrahim Raisi, but two Iranian officials told the newspaper that the operation was called off due to the large number of people in the building and the prospect of failure.
The British newspaper states that the agents nevertheless set off and planted explosives in three rooms of the complex, and later left Iran. They allegedly detonated bombs remotely.
“They are now certain that the Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi security unit,” an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official told the newspaper, referring to the unit tasked with protecting high-ranking officials.
Another IRGC official said it was a humiliation for Iran and a major security breach.
“It’s still a question for everyone how it happened, I can’t understand it. There must be something higher in the hierarchy that no one knows about,” added the official.
Three people who were in the heavily guarded building in Tehran where Ismail Haniyeh was killed told Middle East Eye that the Hamas political leader was killed by a missile fired at his room, not a planted bomb, writes Middle East Eye.
The individuals, one of whom was staying in a room near Haniyehova, said on Friday they heard sounds before the explosion rocked the building, sounds they said were consistent with those made by a missile.
“This was definitely a missile and not a IED,” one of the individuals told MEE, adding that they saw the aftermath of the explosion which appeared to be consistent with a missile attack.
Two other people, who were staying on different floors, also witnessed the consequences of the impact, which resulted in the partial collapse of the ceiling and the outer wall of Haniyeh’s room.
Haniyeh, a Hamas official who played a key role in negotiating a possible cease-fire in Gaza, was killed along with his longtime bodyguard Wasim Abu Shaaban on Wednesday, hours after they attended a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Haniyeh’s killing was Israel’s second high-profile killing in a matter of hours, following an attack in Beirut that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, heightening fears that the region is sliding toward full-scale war.
A source close to officials in the Iranian presidency told MEE that the building where Haniyeh and several other invited Palestinian guests were located near Tehran’s Saadabad Palace and was guarded by the Republican Guard (IRGC).
According to the analysis of the area, the building is located on a slope on the northern edge of Tehran, at the foot of the Alborz mountain, and there are no other residential buildings in the immediate vicinity of the complex.
Shortly after the killing, senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya told reporters, citing eyewitnesses, that the attack was carried out by a missile that “directly hit” Haniyeh.
At the conference in Tehran, Hayya added that while neither Hamas nor Iran want a regional war, the killing must be avenged.
Confirmed information about the circumstances of Haniyeh’s death remains scarce, and Iranian officials have so far been reluctant to reveal many details of the investigation into the attack.
On Wednesday, Iran’s parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee held an emergency meeting to discuss the killing of a Hamas official. But a senior police official told the commission he had no information to pass on to lawmakers, and no one from the IRGC attended the meeting.
Testimony obtained by MEE raises questions about reports that Haniyeh may have been killed by a bomb planted inside the building where he was staying.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Haniyeh had been killed by a sophisticated bomb planted in his room about two months earlier. But the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency reported that an investigation found that Haniyeh was “hit by a missile” and concluded that Israeli involvement “cannot be ruled out.”
Israel has not denied responsibility for the killing. But when asked about Haniyeh’s death at a conference on Thursday, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “Other than eliminating senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, we did not carry out any airstrikes anywhere in the Middle East that night.”
