Ismail Haniyeh killing: Major Israeli covert ops inside Iran over the years

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's killing is second high-profile assassination attributed to Israel in a matter of hours, coming after Israel said it had killed Hezbollah's most senior military official

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital of Tehran, the Palestinian militant group said on Wednesday, describing the strike as a "severe escalation".

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also confirmed Haniyeh's death, hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for Iran's new President, Masoud Pezeshkian.

While Israel had vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders after the Gaza-based militant group's October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, Israeli authorities did not issue any immediate comment to news agencies on the Tehran strike.

However, Hamas has blamed an Israeli airstrike for Haniyeh's death. Subsequently, Iranian media also confirmed that Haniyeh was killed by an airstrike. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said that Haniyeh was "martyred by an air-launched missile" in north Tehran.

 

Haniyeh's killing was the second high-profile assassination attributed to Israel in a matter of hours, coming after Israel said it had killed Iran-backed Hezbollah's most senior military official, Fu'ad Shukr, in a drone strike in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. While Hezbollah has not confirmed Shukr's death, it said that he "was present" at the time of the strike.

While nobody has claimed responsibility for Haniyeh's killing, analysts on Iranian state television immediately blamed Israel for the attack. This comes as no surprise because there has been a years-long shadow war between Iran and Israel, which went hot in April when the exchange of hostilities between the two marked their first direct military confrontation.

As part of this covert war, Israeli forces and its Mossad spy agency have allegedly conducted multiple assassinations and intelligence operations within Iran in the past.

Israel's AI-powered machine gun robot

In November 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Western and Israeli intelligence believed was the father of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme, was killed in a roadside attack outside Tehran.

Blaming Israel and an exiled opposition group, Iran described Fakhrizadeh's killing as a new type of "complex operation". Speaking to Iranian state TV, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council had said that the "operation was very complex, using electronic equipment and no one was present at the scene."

Fakhrizadeh was killed while driving his car, using a robotically operated machine gun, which had been mounted on a truck parked on the roadside. The human sniper, who was controlling the machine gun, reportedly conducted the operation from an undisclosed location over 1,500 kilometres away.

The operation also saw the first reported use of artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct an assassination on foreign soil.

When the motorcade, including Fakhrizadeh's car, came into the robot's sights, the Israeli operators were able to positively identify the nuclear scientist using facial recognition software.

The machine gun opened fire, killing Fakhrizadeh. According to a New York Times report, the entire operation was over in less than a minute and a total of fifteen bullets were fired.

Multiple assassinations

Apart from Fakhrizadeh, Israel is also believed to have assassinated at least four other Iranian scientists and officials.

In January 2010, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a physics professor at Tehran University, was killed using a remote-controlled bomb planted in his motorcycle. Tehran described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist, with Iranian state media claiming that Israel and the United States (US) had killed him.

In November 2010, Majid Shahriari, a professor at Shahid Beheshti University's nuclear engineering faculty in Tehran, was killed when his car exploded while he was on his way to work. Once again, the US and Israel were blamed for the attack.

In January 2012, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, described by Iran as a nuclear scientist working at its primary uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, was killed in Tehran using a bomb placed on his car. This time too, Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack.

In May 2022, Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, an officer in Iran's IRGC, was shot and killed outside of his home in Tehran. Subsequently, a member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council alleged that Khodaei's assassination was "definitely the work of Israel".

Cyberattacks and drone strikes

Israel is also believed to have been involved in at least eight major instances of cyberattack on Iran, with the most famous one being the 2010 attack involving the Stuxnet virus, which was first found in computers at an Iranian nuclear plant. According to an estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security, the virus attack resulted in the destruction of at least 1,000 out of the 9,000 centrifuges present at the Natanz enrichment facility. Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack.

Israel has also reportedly used suicide drones to strike military facilities in Iran, including the Parchin military complex located near Tehran and another facility in Isfahan.

Physical operations

Some of Israel's most daring strikes within Iran have involved boots on the ground.

In January 2018, Mossad agents reportedly raided a secure facility in Tehran and stole classified nuclear information. In April that year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that Israel had found 100,000 "secret files" proving that Iran had lied about never having a nuclear weapons programme.

In June 2023, Mossad announced that it had carried out a special operation in Iranian territory, during which it had captured an Iranian operative sent to lead a planned terror attack in Cyprus against Israeli targets.

The Mossad even published a video of its agents interrogating the operative, who confessed to the plot.