Israel Confirms Killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran

By: BBC

Israel’s defense minister has admitted for the first time that Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Israel Katz made the comments in a speech promising to target leaders of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel.

Haniyeh was killed in the building where he was staying in the Iranian capital in an attack attributed to Israel.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said some steps had been taken towards agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas, but he could not give a timetable for when an agreement would be reached.

This comes after a senior Palestinian official told the BBC that talks between Hamas and Israel were 90 percent complete, but key issues remained.

In his speech, Katz said Israel would “carry out heavy attacks against the Houthis and “behead” their leadership.”

“As we did for Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar, and [Hassan] Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon, we will do the same in Hodeida and Sanaa,” he said, referring to the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas who have all been killed this year.

Haniyeh, 62, was widely considered the overall leader of Hamas and played a key role in negotiations aimed at achieving a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

After his assassination, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza and one of the main architects of the October 7 attacks, as the group’s supreme leader.

Sinwar was killed by the Israeli army in a random clash in Gaza in October and the group is still in the process of choosing a new leader.

Hassan Nasrallah – then the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah – was assassinated in Beirut in September as Israel intensified its military campaign against Hezbollah, which had been carrying out daily cross-border attacks the day after the October 7 attack.

The Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls northwestern Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international ships in the Red Sea shortly after Israel began targeting Hamas in Gaza last October.

The group has vowed to continue until the war in Gaza ends.