Iran Claims Missile Tracked Cellphone to Kill Ex-Hamas Leader Haniyeh
Iran has unveiled what it describes as new information about the strike that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last year. According to a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the killing was executed with a precision missile that homed in on Haniyeh’s cellphone signal.
Haniyeh was eliminated on July 31, 2024, in the Iranian capital, only hours after attending the swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Months later, Israeli Defense Minister Yisroel Katz publicly acknowledged that Israel was responsible for the operation.
Conflicting reports about how the strike was carried out have circulated since the assassination. Early accounts described a missile strike, while a New York Times investigation suggested that an explosive device had been secretly planted inside Haniyeh’s guesthouse and detonated remotely once he arrived.
On Sunday, however, IRGC spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini dismissed the bomb theory outright. He maintained that there was no insider involvement or breach of Iran’s security systems. “The assassination of the martyr Ismail Haniyeh did not involve any act of sabotage,” Naini stated.
Instead, Naini said, the Hamas chief was killed when “a missile was fired from a certain distance and struck the window directly, hitting him while he was on a phone call from the same direction the missile came from.” He added that the weapon locked onto Haniyeh’s location through his mobile phone signal.
Iran’s reaction at the time was initially restrained. Although Haniyeh was killed in the heart of Tehran, the regime held off on immediate retaliation. Two months later, however, on October 1, 2024, Iran launched a barrage of roughly 80 ballistic missiles toward Israel. Tehran claimed the strike was retaliation not only for Haniyeh’s death but also for the assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC General Abbas Nilforoushan in Beirut the previous month.
According to Naini, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council reached a swift conclusion after Haniyeh’s killing that retaliation was inevitable. “The timing of the retaliation was left to the military command,” he said, noting that the delay stemmed from “difficulties” that arose following Iran’s unprecedented direct assault on Israel in April 2024—though he did not specify what those difficulties were.
Naini also said Tehran debated whether to let its regional proxies—Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis—carry out the revenge strike, or to act directly. In the end, he said, “a unified decision was made” for Iran itself to take responsibility and launch the missiles from its own territory.
{Matzav.com}