The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said on Wednesday that its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an attack it blamed on Israel while he was in Tehran, where he was on an official visit. “Leader brother, fighting martyr Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the movement, died as a result of a treacherous Zionist raid on his hometown in Tehran, after taking part in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president,” the group said in a statement. Hours later, Iran said it confirmed the death.
According to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the attack, which reportedly also killed one of Haniyeh's security guards, is under investigation. At this time, Israeli authorities have not confirmed any attacks in Tehran, nor the death of Haniyeh, who attended the inauguration of the country's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in the Iranian capital yesterday.
“Do not consider those who are killed in the path of Allah as dead, but rather they are alive with their Lord, receiving sustenance,” the group said of the death of Haniyeh, “number one” in Hamas’s political bureau, who was himself exiled to Qatar alive.
“It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom,” adds the group, responsible for the October 7 attack on Israeli territory that left some 1,200 dead and more than 250 kidnapped; and which led to the current war in the Gaza Strip, in which more than 39,400 Palestinians have been killed.
News of Haniyeh's alleged death comes just hours after Israel confirmed it had killed the military leader of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, the group's “supreme military leader” and a close adviser to the organization's leader, Hasan Nasrallah.
Israel has blamed Shukr, who is considered Hezbollah's chief of staff, for the deaths of thousands of Israeli civilians over the years, and specifically the 12 children killed on Saturday in a rocket attack in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Al Shati refugee camp in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. He attended the Islamic University of Gaza, where he first became involved with Hamas, and graduated in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in Arabic literature. was appointed head of a Hamas office in 1997 and rose through the ranks of the organization.
He headed the Hamas list that won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, and became Palestinian prime minister in a unity government with the secular Fatah of President Mahmoud Abbas, but historic disagreements between the two groups ended with the ouster of Fatah and the violent seizure of power by the Islamists in the Gaza Strip enclave, which has been de facto ruled by them since 2007.
In addition, he was the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from 2006 until February 2017, when he was replaced by Yahya Sinwar, who is considered the mastermind behind the October 7 attacks and the true power of the group, with the final say in recent ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
A few months later, on May 6, 2017, Haniyeh was elected president of Hamas's Political Bureau, replacing Khaled Mashal; when he moved from the Strip to Qatar, from where he was responsible for the Islamist group's leadership and representation, especially in the international arena.