Bomb was planted Haniyeh’s room: Israeli media

JERUSALEM

A private Israeli broadcaster, in an investigative report aired late on Dec. 28, revealed new information about the assassination of former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh following the government's lifting of censorship on the case, claiming a bomb was planted in his room.

Haniyeh was killed inside his residence during a visit to Tehran on July 31. Months after, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted Israel's responsibility for his assassination.

The assassination was carried out with a "precision bomb" placed inside Haniyeh's room and controlled remotely, Channel 12 said in the report.

The device was planted after the inauguration ceremony of Iran's newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, it added.

According to the media outlet investigation, preparations for the operation included meticulous surveillance of Haniyeh's movements to ensure that he remained in a specific room on multiple occasions.

The operation faced a major challenge when the air conditioning in Haniyeh's room malfunctioned, raising the possibility that he would be moved to another location. However, a maintenance team resolved the issue, allowing the plan to proceed, the report claimed.

Channel 12 reported that planning the operation took months, with unnamed sources describing the mission as "one of the most complex and sensitive operations" and claiming Haniyeh was playing a key role in planning attacks on Israel.

Haniyeh lived in Qatar, but killing him there risked torpedoing the hostage negotiations that Doha has mediated since the start of the war. Accordingly, the options for where to kill Haniyeh were Türkiye, Moscow and Tehran.

Israel feared a furious reaction from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and similarly did not want to anger Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaving Iran as the most suitable option, the network said.

The fact that Haniyeh stayed repeatedly in the same Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ guesthouse in the luxurious northern Tehran neighborhood of Sa’adat Abad made the operation easier to plan.

However, he was guarded as a guest of honor by the IRGC’s top personal security team, requiring a deep level of infiltration in order to pull off the assassination.