Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday. Iran has not provided details on how the killing, which is currently under investigation, occurred. Analysts on Iranian state television quickly blamed Israel. Israel did not immediately comment, but it usually does not when it comes to operations attributed to the Mossad. In 2020, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while driving outside Tehran.
Ismail Haniyeh was 62 years old and had been the political leader of Hamas since 2017. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza, his parents fled the city of Asqalan after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Since 2019, Haniyeh has been living in Doha, Qatar, where he was granted political asylum. He was recently in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. In his youth, he studied at al-Azhar Institute and graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Arabic literature.
In 1983, Haniyeh joined the Islamic student bloc, considered the precursor to Hamas. He quickly rose through the ranks of the movement, becoming a close associate of co-founder Ahmed Yassin. He was imprisoned in Israel following protests in 1987 and 1988, and in 1992 was arrested again and deported with others to southern Lebanon, before returning to Gaza. He escaped several assassination attempts. In 1993, upon his return to Gaza, he became dean of the Islamic University. His political career led to him serving as prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority from 2006 to 2007.
However, due to internal tensions between Abu Mazen and Hamas, he was tasked with forming a short-lived government of national unity, which ended with Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh, who over the years had accumulated a fortune of at least four billion dollars, lived in Qatar, was married and had 13 children, three of whom were killed in an Israeli raid earlier this year. In an official statement broadcast on the organization’s television channel, Al Aqsa TV, Hamas. In confirming the killing of its leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Hamas points the finger at Israel, calling it a “Zionist attack. Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people, to the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and to all free peoples of the world, brother leader Ismail Haniyeh is a martyr,” the statement reads.
Meanwhile, in another statement by Hamas political bureau member Musa Abu Marzuk, the Palestinian group quoted Haniyeh as saying that the Palestinian cause has “costs”: “We are ready for these costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, for the sake of Almighty God and for the sake of the dignity of this nation. The assassination of our leader, Ismail Haniyeh, is a cowardly act and will not go unanswered.”
