Within 24 hours, three heavyweights have been taken out. Israel’s long list of enemies is shortened by three when top leaders of Hezbollah, IRGC and Hamas were killed, giving a morale boost to the Jewish state. The assassinations of Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr, IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh have sent shockwaves across the region.

 

Fuad Shukr, or Fouad Shukar, who was a senior member of Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah since the early 1980s, is believed to be a key military adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He was involved in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel. On July 30, 2024, however, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

 

Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, is believed to have been assassinated in an attack near the Syrian capital of Damascus. Having previously threatened to kill Donald Trump, he was the senior commander who planned and executed the Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles attacks in April this year against Israel.

Ismail Haniyeh was the biggest prize amongst the three after the top Hamas leader was assassinated on July 31. Not only Iran had lost three leaders in 24 hours – each from Hezbollah, Hamas and its own IRGC – the assassination of Haniyeh in Iran’s capital of Tehran is a huge humiliation to the Mullahs. It sends three chilling messages to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

First message – the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) can strike anywhere, anytime, against whomever it wants inside Iran. Second message – Hamas leaders are no longer safe anywhere in the world, including safe haven Iran. Third message – Israel has the capability to hit Iran proxies simultaneously – all at once – whether they are in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria or deep inside Iran.

 

On top of scoring hat-trick, Israel also gave away a bonus, releasing video of an airstrike in Gaza Strip on July 13 that killed Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif – the architect of the October 7 attacks that massacred 1,200 Jews party goers. That means Hamas political leader (Haniyeh) and military leader (Deif) had been neutralized, leaving “dead man walking” Yahya Sinwar calling the shot.

However, unlike the admission of the killing of Fuad Shukr, Mohammed Deif and even the bombing of Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, Tel Aviv has not confirmed or denied its responsibility in the assassination of Haniyeh.  While Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s killing, the 62-year-old Haniyeh could have been betrayed and assassinated by his own brothers.

 

Exactly why should Israel care how Muslims worldwide feels, whether it takes responsibility for the killing of Haniyeh or not? Would the Muslims hate the Jews any less if it does not admit to the assassination? On the contrary, if indeed it was Israel’s spy agency Mossad who pulled up the brilliant assassination on Iran’s soil, it would send shivers down the spine of all its enemies if Israel admits it.

 

There are two reasons why Israel does not admit to the assassination – either the time is not right to do it due to strategic reason, or it was not involved in killing Haniyeh. With US$3 billion annual budget and 7,000 staff, Mossad is the second-largest spy agency in the West after the CIA. It has a network of agents and informants everywhere, including hostile countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Iran and even inside Palestinian militant group.

Apparently, Haniyeh was blown up to pieces by an explosive device covertly smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying, according to New York Times. The guesthouse, where the Hamas leader had stayed  several times when visiting Tehran, is run and protected by the supposedly fearless and powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

 

The bomb, which had been smuggled and hidden two months ago, was detonated remotely once it was confirmed that he was inside his room at the guesthouse. While the blast also killed a bodyguard, the explosion shook the building but otherwise shows little damage to the exterior walls or the structure. Photographs of the building after the attack have raised more questions than answers.

 

The photograph shows an upper-floor apartment of the building that was hit, with damaged part of the structure has now been covered with a tarp. A resident said – “We heard a sound around 2 a.m. (local time). It wasn’t a loud explosion, but like a sound similar to a mild explosion.” But if a bomb, presumably planted under Haniyeh’s bed, was used, why did Hamas and Tehran say Haniyeh was killed by a missile?

Had Israel sent a drone to kill Haniyeh, not only such security breach is a humiliation to the Iranian defence system, but the missile would have caused a more serious damage to the building. Presumably Israel possessed the smart and precision missile which could sneak into Haniyeh’s room and killed him without harming the building, why would the IDF waste such weapon?

 

It would be easier for Israeli’s drone to unleash a nasty missile to flatten the entire building to guarantee Haniyeh’s death, the same way a 2,000-pound bomb (900 kilograms) was used to assassinate Mohammed Deif. The IDF cares very little about human casualties in its relentless bombing of Gaza, so why should it care about the safety of IRGC troops guarding the guesthouse building?

 

Even if Mossad was involved in engineering the most remarkable assassination of the Hamas terrorist leader, the spy agency still have to plan how to penetrate an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, learned which room Haniyeh would stay and were able to confirm he was there in order to detonate the bomb. To do that, it required months of planning.

This isn’t a Hollywood movie where a beautiful and sexy Angelina Jolie or Mia Khalifa is sent to seduce IRGC guards before planting some bombs to be triggered in 2 months time. Mossad would require either treachery in the circle of Haniyeh or in the Iranians for the plan to work. Only someone with access to the highly secured and guarded building could bring the bombs into Haniyeh’s room (or other rooms).

 

Sure, Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, could still pull the stunt due to its vast resources and first-class intelligence. Besides, there is a long queue of Iranians who hate the Iranian regime and would gladly work as a mole for Mossad. Still, Haniyeh made the biggest mistake by staying in the same guesthouse in the same room in all his three trips to Iran since the October 7 attack on the Jewish state.

 

The fact that the Mossad managed to plant the explosive device in a high-security facility shows not only the deep penetration of Israeli intelligence services inside Iran, but also the vulnerabilities of the Iranian intelligence and security apparatus – especially a breach of the Ansar-al-Mahdi, the protection unit responsible for safeguarding high-ranking officials. Crucially, the bomb was said to be a high-tech device that used artificial intelligence (AI).

But Iran and Hamas could be responsible for the “murder of the most heinous kind” (as Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim labelled the assassination of his best friend). That would explain how the bomb was happily resting under Haniyeh’s bed for weeks without a security sweep ever since. Why would Ayatollah Ali Khamenei want to eliminate Haniyeh?

 

U.S. President Joe Biden says the assassination of Hamas’s lead negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, had not helped cease-fire talks to end the conflict. That’s precisely why the Iranian Mullahs wanted to neutralize Haniyeh, who despite known for using tough rhetoric, he was actually  considered moderate by Hamas standards, and a pragmatist who wanted to broker a ceasefire.

 

In the same breath, unlike Haniyeh, who is actually worth more than US$4 billion thanks to the lucrative 20% tax charged on all items entering through tunnels from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, Hamas’s military wing led by Yahya Sinwar is more radical and extreme. Both leaders have different strategies, which clashed with each other, leading to bad blood and ultimately the killing of Haniyeh.

The conflicting opinions included demands the terrorist group should make in the ceasefire negotiations with Israel. While Sinwar, who is hiding in tunnels, wanted the war to continue indefinitely, as did Iranian regime, billionaire Haniyeh has everything to lose if he adopts a similar extreme and confrontational diplomacy. The U.S. has told Qatar that it should expel Hamas if the group continues to reject a cease-fire with Israel.

 

Yes, even Palestinians have raised questions whether it was an inside job orchestrated by Sinwar to eliminate a colleague who might sell him out. Haniyeh was living in palaces and luxurious hotels whilst Sinwar was trapped in a rat hole. Haniyeh was Hamas’ international face while Sinwar was Hamas’ pariah. With Haniyeh’s death, Sinwar would be calling the shot now, including any hostage deal which Qatar, U.S. or Israel is interested.

 

Likewise, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could use Haniyeh’s assassination to rally the Iranian people against Israel, as well as diverting attention from the domestic economic crisis – high inflation (above 30% for five years in a row) and currency devaluation (worth only one-twentieth as much as it was in 2015). Sacrificing Haniyeh is a cheap price to boost the regime stability and morale of its people and regional proxies.

To add salt into injury, there was also bad blood between Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It’s not rocket science that Haniyeh has many enemies. A unity agreement brokered by China last month to bring together the two Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah – to form a government together has also sparked an internal power struggle over who will actually lead Hamas – Haniyeh or Sinwar?

 

Like it or not, regardless whether the assassination was carried out by Israel, Iran, Hamas or Fatah, everyone benefits from Haniyeh’s death – either tactically or strategically. Even if Israel was the one responsible, it was the betrayal of IRGC (with or without Tehran’s knowledge) which made the assassination possible. But if Israel wasn’t involved, it could still stay silent and watch chaos erupted in Iran and its regional proxies.

 

Interestingly, while some Arab nations have condemned the assassination of Haniyeh, the Saudi Foreign Ministry had not issued an official comment on any of the assassination. Saudi political writer Sultan Nafiei said – “The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh does not concern us. He is not a true defender of the Palestinian cause but rather someone who sought to profit from it”.

Ismail Al-Basri, a Gulf political researcher condemned Haniyeh’s corruption – “I personally expect that Iran facilitated the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh. We will soon see the billions of dollars that Haniyeh obtained in the hands of his sons, just as we saw before how the support money for the Palestinians that was given to [late Palestine Liberation Organization Chair] Yasser Arafat went to his daughter, and the Palestinian people did not benefit from it.”

 

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August 3rd, 2024 by financetwitter

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