How Mossad killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: revealed by former spies

In an unprecedented move, former Mossad agents have detailed how Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was planned - and nearly derailed by a broken air conditioner, in a clear warning to the Houthis: ‘We can get you, too’.

Left: Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi; right: slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Mossad’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was one of the most complex intelligence operations in the history of Israel’s storied agency but it was nearly derailed by a broken airconditioner, according to former agents.

Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in July, when he was instantly killed with his bodyguard, Wassim Abu Shaaban. He had been targeted by a bomb that had been smuggled into the guesthouse by Iranian agents hired by Israel’s intelligence and counter-terror agency.

Slain Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh (L) and Yahya Sinwar at a meeting in Gaza. Picture; AFP.

In an almost unprecedented move, former Mossad agents have detailed how Haniyeh’s assassination was carried out in a complex, high-security operation that took months to plan.

Their revelations come just a week after other former agents detailed to CBS TV the planning behind the exploding pager operation in Lebanon that killed and injured hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and their families.

Mossad seldom accepts responsibility for assassinations; the fact it has not only accepted ­responsibility but described the intricate details of two major operations in two weeks suggests Jerusalem is sending a blatant warning to the Houthi leadership, including the group’s long-time chief, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in Yemen.

At the time of his death, Haniyeh was staying in the elite Saadat Abad neighbourhood of Tehran, in an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Neshat compound that boasts some of the most advanced security systems in the world and regularly hosts senior Iranian ­regime officials and their guests, Israel’s Channel 12 TV reports.

A man walks beneath a giant billboard showing pictures of the slain figures (L to R) Palestinian Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, and Lebanese Hezbollah's commander Fuak Shukr, in Lebanon. Picture: AFP.

Bani Sabati, an Iran researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, told the broadcaster the Hamas political leader’s ­assassination was even more complex than the agency’s notorious pager operation.

“The Haniyeh assassination is at an even higher level than the pager operation. We penetrated the ins and outs of the most guarded Iranian facility,” he said.

Because Haniyeh was a political figure regarded as a moderate of the Palestinian military organisation, he had not been considered for assassination until last year’s October 7 massacre. However, Channel 12 reported that ­evidence seized in a Hamas tunnel after the attack revealed Haniyeh had co-ordinated it with military leader Yahya Sinwar, and that evidence put him at the top of Mossad’s assassination list.

The agency had a choice of ­locations for eliminating Haniyeh. He lived in Doha and travelled frequently to Moscow, Istanbul and Tehran. However, according to Ronen Bergman, an expert on Israel’s targeted assassinations, Qatar – where ceasefire talks were being held with Hamas – was ruled out in case an assassination there derailed the negotiations. Dr Bergman also told Channel 12 Israel didn’t want to risk the “serious consequences” of angering Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That left Iran.

Watching Haniyeh’s visits to Tehran in the months after October 7, Mossad noted that he travelled to Iran’s capital and stayed each time not only in the same IRGC compound – but in the same bedroom.

He was guarded by the most elite section of the IRGC, the Ansar al-Mahdi unit. “For them, a senior foreigner from a terrorist organisation is equal in importance to the president of Iran,” Mr Sabati told Channel 12.

The original plan was to ­assassinate Haniyeh in the building in May when he attended the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s former president who died in a helicopter crash, according to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper. The operation didn’t go ahead due to the large crowds inside the building, two Iranian officials of the IRGC said.

Instead, they planned to kill him after Mr Pezeshkian’s inauguration.

With help from unknown ­accomplices inside Tehran, Mossad agents penetrated the compound to plant a bomb in a pillow in Haniyeh’s room, The Jerusalem Post reports. However, at the last minute the airconditioning unit in the room broke down and Haniyeh switched rooms temporarily, nearly derailing the entire operation.

“The operation was walking a tightrope,” a source told N12. “There was a fear that his room would be replaced with another. However, they managed to fix the airconditioner, and he returned to the room.”

At 1.30am (local time), a massive explosion tore Haniyeh’s room apart after the bomb was detonated by remote control.

“There’s a first aid team in the accommodation facility. They hear the explosion – and run ­inside,” Dr Bergman told Channel 12. “After about a minute, the medical team declares him dead, and then (Haniyeh’s aide) Khalil al-Hayya enters and sees his colleague lying dead and bleeding on the ground, and he himself falls to his knees and bursts into tears.

“It was a dramatic moment.”

It is still unknown who assisted Mossad in the operation. Shortly after Haniyeh was killed, Esmail Qaani, commander of the elite Quds Force, disappeared for three weeks, as suspicion fell on him and his fighters for involvement in the assassination. However, Tehran denied he had been arrested and he reappeared in public at the ­funeral for Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan, killed in Lebanon by an Israeli strike.

As the search for agents inside Iran continues, Tamir Hayman, former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, told Israeli media: “This requires a whole network of execution capabilities.

“It probably involves some people who betrayed their country or betrayed their mission and co-­operated to allow this to happen.”

After Israel accepted responsibility last week for Haniyeh’s death, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “harsh punishment” against the country. But the admission that Mossad was behind the assassination probably had less to do with threats against Iran than a not-so-subtle warning to its proxy in Yemen.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz warned the Houthi leadership that they faced the same fate as Haniyeh and that of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in Beirut almost two months after Haniyeh’s death.

Revealing the magnitude of their agency’s ability to infiltrate other countries’ agencies and the long-term planning behind the dramatic success of their operations sends one message: however long it takes, we will get you too.