Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran

Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed after the building where they were staying was struck, the statement said, adding that Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on July 30.

An emergency meeting

In the wake of the Hamas leader’s killing, an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council is currently underway at Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s residence. Such a meeting only occurs during extraordinary circumstances, US media reported, citing two Iranian officials. On July 30, Haniyeh, who led Hamas’s political operations from exile in Qatar, attended the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. He also met Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As a negotiator in the ceasefire talks

Amid the Israel-Gaza war, Haniyeh acted as a negotiator in the ceasefire talks. Hamas claimed in April that Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren. The military wing of Hamas is led by Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the mastermind of the October 7 attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza.

Behind a drone strike

The development comes a day after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claimed to have killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel had claimed Fuad Shukr was behind a drone strike that killed 12 children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Who was Ismail Haniyeh

The 62-year-old was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City. He joined Hamas in the late 1980s and swiftly rose through the ranks to become a close associate of Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In the 1980s and 1990s, Haniyeh served several sentences in Israeli prisons. After Hamas’s win in the 2006 legislative election, he became the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority government. However, it was short-lived as the next year he was dismissed from his position by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007. Ten years later, in 2017, he was elected the head of Hamas’s political wing. The same year, Haniyeh was named a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States.