Thread: Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Tehran as Iran vows revenge

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran after attending the inauguration of the country’s new president, Iran and the militant group said early Wednesday.


No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion quickly fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.

Live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed, Iran vows revenge against Israel | AP News

Perhaps Russia can donate to Iran a couple of hypersonic missiles for special delivery to Netanyahu. Or just transfer the technology to the Iranians. That should liven things up a bit.

I fancy the Israelis would have a good chance of intercepting and destroying those missiles.

Congratulations to whoever was involved in taking out the Hamas scum.

Originally Posted by Neverna

Perhaps Russia can donate to Iran a couple of hypersonic missiles for special delivery to Netanyahu.

More slimey comments from a lowlife putin worshipper. Those missiles are a joke and have been shot down by Ukraine multiple times with Patriot missiles. Garbage kit just like all ruzzian junk.

Originally Posted by 39TG

I fancy the Israelis would have a good chance of intercepting and destroying those missiles.

Been there done that...

Originally Posted by 39TG

Congratulations to whoever was involved in taking out the Hamas scum.

One less terrorist scumbag on the planet.

Originally Posted by Neverna

Perhaps Russia can donate to Iran a couple of hypersonic missiles for special delivery to Netanyahu. Or just transfer the technology to the Iranians. That should liven things up a bit.

Expect both the Russians and Chinese to get involved greatly in the region.
That will really spice things up.

Originally Posted by HuangLao

Expect both the Russians and Chinese to get involved greatly in the region.

They already are, you gibbering moron.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order.
Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning, shortly after Iran announced that Haniyeh had been killed, said the three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards, The New York Times reported.
They asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to speak publicly.



https://english.aawsat.com/world/5045996-khamenei-orders-attack-israel-haniyeh-killing

Regime change may well be possible and sustainable. A know someone who worked in Iran in a post-doctoral fellowship, who said that there are many highly educated people, particularly women, who do not agree with or even obey the current authorities. They do unapproved-of things on the sly, but there are many who do.

Israel kills ‘Osama Bin Laden of Gaza’

Updated

Israel has officially confirmed the death of Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, who it said was assassinated in Gaza on July 13.

The IDF released a video of an airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis that they say killed Deif, who was second in command of Hamas inside Gaza and considered the mastermind behind the October 7 attacks.

A huge explosion could be seen close to tightly-packed homes, which local media said left 70 people dead and more than 100 injured.

Known as “The Guest”, Deif was hunted for decades by Israel as he hid deep within Hamas’s terror tunnels that he helped to design.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, posted footage of him drawing an X over the face of Deif, calling him the “Osama Bin Laden of Gaza”, as he vowed to pursue all Hamas terrorists behind October 7.

“We will not rest until this mission is accomplished,” he declared.

excellent news. one by one the hamas pigs will be slaughtered.

yet again, the israelis ridding the world of pondlife. iran next.

Originally Posted by taxexile

yet again, the israelis ridding the world of pondlife. iran next.

What about seconding the Israelis to protect UK borders? Game on.

It’s not surprising that Israel would have caught up with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top political leader, who was assassinated in an airstrike in Tehran on Wednesday. It had tried to kill him before, and following the shocking atrocities of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, the Israelis made clear that the group’s leadership were “dead men walking.”

Since then, the gloves have come off in Israel’s shadow war with Iran, which it calls the “head of the snake” of a network of terrorist proxies that include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and smaller militias operating in Iraq and Syria. As the devastating war in Gaza rages on with no end in sight, Israel has set about picking off senior commanders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps one by one.

Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel on April 13—which saw Israel’s allies scramble to bolster the country’s air defenses against more than 300 drones and cruise and ballistic missiles—was a response to the assassination of an IRGC commander in Syria and was designed to restore Iran’s deterrence. If Israel did carry out the high-stakes, high-risk assassination of Hamas’s most recognizable leader in the heart of the Iranian capital, such measures have clearly failed.

Haniyeh’s death will have little practical impact on the ground in Gaza: The leader was principally based in Doha, Qatar, where he was rumored to enjoy a lavish lifestyle while acting as the international face of Hamas. However, his assassination will almost certainly set back the current round of cease-fire talks, further undercutting much-dashed hopes for a hostage release deal and a negotiated end to hostilities. Such an outcome may not be unwelcome for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partners, whose fragile coalition has long seemed on the verge of collapse.

The assassination is significant not because of who Haniyeh is per se—there will always be others to take his place—but because of its location and timing. Initial reports attributed to Hamas and published in Iranian state media said Israel conducted a predawn airstrike on Haniyeh’s home in Tehran. This would have been outrageous on a normal day, let alone hours after the new Iranian president’s inauguration, when the capital was flooded with senior Iranian officials, foreign dignitaries, IRGC commanders, and an assortment of wanted terrorists.

Iran is known to have sophisticated Russian S-300 air defenses, developed in response to longstanding U.S. and Israeli threats to its covert nuclear program. The last time airstrikes were even rumored in Tehran, the IRGC was so trigger-happy that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board. It is unfathomable that an airstrike originating from outside Iran’s borders could have proceeded undetected on the day of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration.

As a result, both the timing and the location of Haniyeh’s assassination would be deeply embarrassing to Iran. In addition to sending the message that no one in the country is safe, the Hamas leader’s killing in a protected apartment in downtown Tehran telegraphs something more worrying to the Iranian regime: It was almost certainly aided by Iranians inside Iran.

One largely unacknowledged facet of the international reaction to the horrors of Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza is the growth of grassroots Iranian support for Israel. A surprising number of ordinary Iranians inside the country and within the sizable diaspora abroad have taken pro-Israel positions both on social media and during demonstrations in Western countries. So many Iranians cheered on Israel’s retaliation for Iran’s April 13 attack that the regime was forced to issue an warning threatening to arrest anyone caught defending Israel or criticizing the IRGC online.

Many people in Iran today are still grappling with the brutal fallout from the unprecedented “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022, which saw hundreds of thousands of protesters take to the streets nationwide to call for gender equality, freedom, and the downfall of the regime. Just yesterday the singer Shervin Hajipour, who wrote the viral song “Baraye,” which became the anthem of the protests and won a Grammy Award, was summoned to prison to begin a nearly four-year sentence for “propaganda against the establishment” and incitement.

Many Iranians witnessed the scenes in southern Israel on Oct. 7, including footage of Hamas militants killing unarmed civilians, assaulting women, and taking hostages into Gaza, and see the fingerprints of the Iranian regime, which is Hamas’s principal backer. As recently as last year, Iranian authorities were actively shooting protesters in the streets, sexually assaulting female protesters in prison en masse, and sentencing thousands of people to lengthy prison time or even death. The support for Israel inside Iran has grown not because of any deep love for the Jewish state, but instead out of the public’s abhorrence of its own government.

As Haniyeh’s assassination attests, Iran’s brutal authoritarianism now poses a threat to its own internal security. The manner in which the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement was crushed has fueled a new generation of Iranians who might be tempted by cash incentives or promises of residency abroad to collaborate in foreign-inspired plots against their own government. Israel’s April 19 retaliatory strike on a military site in Isfahan province was likely conducted by quadcopter drones launched from inside Iran. It’s possible that the airborne projectile that struck Haniyeh’s apartment had similarly local origins, with such drones easier to launch undetected from inside the country than from beyond Iran’s borders.

In spite of the increasing number of tourists, businesspeople, and other foreign visitors captured in Iran and paraded before the Revolutionary Courts as “spies,” the reality is that many of the assassination plots attributed to Israel are carried out by local Iranian recruits. These include the 2020 killing of the Iran nuclear program’s shadowy mastermind Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by an AI-programmed, remote-controlled machine gun, as well as the targeted killings of at least six nuclear scientists and the deaths of seven officials working on Iran’s missile and drone programs. Blasts at the Natanz nuclear facility, the theft of nuclear documents from a warehouse in Tehran, and the kidnapping and interrogation of multiple IRGC officials inside Iran have all been attributed to local networks operating on behalf of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

Haniyeh’s assassination sends a chilling message to those in the Iranian regime, not only about the skill and penetration of Israel’s intelligence capabilities, but also about the extent to which many of their own compatriots are willing to risk imprisonment, torture, and even execution to aid their country’s enemies. The recent attempt to resuscitate the long-moribund reformist wing in Iran through the newly elected Pezeshkian may in part amount to a recognition by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that the brutal repression of recent years has been counterproductive for national security.

However, as long as Iran’s Islamic Republic remains so profoundly lacking in popular legitimacy, Israel will likely continue to boldly exploit widespread dissatisfaction among the Iranian people to its own ends.

Hamas' Haniyeh Killed in Iran: Israel's Role Explored

Apparently, it wasn’t an airstrike that got him.


Haifa, IsraelCNN —
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday using an explosive device that had been covertly hidden in the guest house where he was staying, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
According to the source, who had been briefed on the operation, the bomb was concealed about two months ago in the guest house whe
re Haniyeh was known to stay in Tehran and detonated remotely once he was inside his room there.


Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran by bomb planted months before blast, source says | CNN

Originally Posted by beachbound

bomb

Now if they could just get Nasrullah, that would be grand.

It would never happen in UK. Ethnic minority perpetrators would have done it with a knife!

How very civilised.

Iranian airspace closed amid Israeli attack, report



Iran's civil aviation authorities closed Iranian airspace early on Saturday, amid an Israeli attack on military targets around the capital Tehran and other sites around the country, the New York Times said. ABC news said thus far, no Israeli planes were hit and or damaged in the attack while Iranian outlets said Iran thwarted the attacks.