How Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Was Killed in Iran

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How ****** Leader Ismail Haniyeh Was ******* in Iran

Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of ******, was assassinated on Wednesday by an explosive device covertly smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying, according to seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians, and an ********* official.

The ***** had been hidden approximately two months ago in the guesthouse, according to five of the Middle Eastern officials. The guesthouse is run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and is part of a large compound, known as Neshat, in an upscale neighborhood of northern Tehran.

Mr. Haniyeh was in Iran’s capital for the presidential inauguration. The ***** was detonated remotely, the five officials said, once it was confirmed that he was inside his room at the guesthouse. The blast also ******* a bodyguard.

The ********** shook the building, shattered some windows and caused the partial collapse of an exterior wall, according to the two Iranian officials, members of the Revolutionary Guards briefed on the incident. Such damage was also evident in a photograph of the building shared with The New York Times.

Mr. Haniyeh, who had led ******’s political office in Qatar, had stayed at the guesthouse several times when visiting Tehran, according to the Middle Eastern officials. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details about the **************.

Iranian officials and ****** said Wednesday that ******* was responsible for the **************, an assessment also reached by several U.S. officials who requested anonymity. The ************** threatened to unleash another wave of ********* in the Middle East and upend the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Gaza. Mr. Haniyeh had been a top negotiator in the cease-***** talks.

******* has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the ********, but ******** intelligence officials briefed the ******* States and other Western governments on the details of the operation in the immediate aftermath, according to the five Middle Eastern officials.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the ******* States had received no advance knowledge of the ************** plot.

In the hours after the ********, speculation immediately focused on the possibility that ******* had ******* Mr. Haniyeh with a missile strike, possibly fired from a drone or a plane, similar to how ******* had launched a missile on a military base in Isfahan in April.

That missile theory raised questions about how ******* might have been able to evade Iranian air defense systems again to ******** such a brazen airstrike in the capital.

As it turns out, the assassins were able to exploit a different kind of gap in Iran’s defenses: a lapse in the security of a supposedly tightly guarded compound that allowed a ***** to be planted and to remain hidden for many weeks before it would eventually be triggered.

Such a breach, three Iranian officials said, was a catastrophic ******** of intelligence and security for Iran and a tremendous embarrassment for the Guards, which uses the compound for retreats, secret meetings and housing prominent guests like Mr. Haniyeh.

How the ***** was stashed in the guesthouse remained unclear. The Middle Eastern officials said that the planning for the ************** took months and required extensive surveillance of the compound. The two Iranian officials who described the nature of the ************** said they did not know how or when the explosives were planted in the room.

******* decided to carry out the ************** outside Qatar, where Mr. Haniyeh and other senior members of ******’s political leadership live. The Qatari government has been mediating the negotiations between ******* and ****** over a cease-***** in Gaza.

The deadly blast early Wednesday shattered windows and collapsed a portion of the wall of the compound, photographs showed and the Iranian officials said. It appeared to do minimal damage beyond the building itself, as a missile probably would have done.

At around 2 a.m. local time, the device exploded, according to the Middle Eastern officials, including the Iranians. Startled building staff members, the officials said, ran to find the source of the tremendous noise, leading them to the room where Mr. Haniyeh was staying with a bodyguard.

A satellite image taken on July 25 shows no visible damage or a green tarp on the building, suggesting that the image with the visible damage was taken more recently.Credit…Maxar Technologies

The compound is staffed with a medical team which rushed to the room immediately after the **********. The team declared that Mr. Haniyeh had ***** immediately. The team tried to revive the bodyguard, but he, too, was *****.

The leader of the ************ Islamic ******, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, was staying next door, two of the Iranian officials said. His room was not badly damaged, suggesting precise planning in the targeting of Mr. Haniyeh.

Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy commander of ****** in the Gaza Strip who was also in Tehran, arrived at the scene and saw his colleague’s body, according to the five Middle Eastern officials.

Among the people immediately notified, said the three Iranian officials, was Gen. Ismail Ghaani, the commander in chief of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, which works closely with Iranian allies in the region, including ****** and Hezbollah. He notified Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the middle of the night, waking him up, the officials said.

Four hours after the blast, the Revolutionary Guards issued a statement that Mr. Haniyeh had been *******. By 7 a.m., Mr. Khamenei had summoned the members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to his compound for an emergency meeting, at which he issued an order to strike ******* in retaliation, according to the three Iranian officials.

Tehran had already been under heightened security because of the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, with senior government officials, military commanders and dignitaries from 86 countries gathering at Parliament in central Tehran for the ceremony.

Mr. Haniyeh had looked cheerful and triumphant on Tuesday during the swearing in, hugging the new president after he delivered his inaugural speech, and the two men raised their hands together, making the victory sign.

In Iran, the method of ************** was the subject of rumor and dispute. The Tasnim News Agency, the media outlet for the Guards, reported that witnesses said an object like a missile had hit the window of Mr. Haniyeh’s room and exploded.

But the two Iranian officials, the members of the Guards briefed on the *******, confirmed that the ********** had taken place inside Mr. Haniyeh’s room, and said that an initial investigation showed that the explosives had been placed there sometime in advance.

They described the *******’s precision and sophistication as similar in tactic to the remote controlled A.I. ****** ******* that ******* used to ************ Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020.

******** ************** operations outside of the country are primarily carried out by Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence service. David Barnea, the head of Mossad, said in January that his service was “obliged” to hunt down the leaders of ******, the group behind the Oct. 7 attacks in *******.

“It will take time, as it took after the massacre in Munich, but our hands will catch them wherever they are,” Mr. Barnea said, referring to the ******** of ******** athletes by terrorists at the 1972 Olympics.

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