Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday publicly acknowledged for the first time that Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July, raising tensions between Tehran and its arch-enemy Israel in a region riven by Israel’s war in Gaza and the conflict is being shaken in Lebanon, further endangered.
He said Israel defeated Hamas and Hezbollah, “blinded” Iran’s defense systems and damaged its production systems. He also said the country had toppled the Assad regime in Syria, dealing a major blow to what he called the “axis of evil.”
“We will also deal a serious blow to the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, which is the last one standing.”
Israel will “damage its strategic infrastructure and we will behead its leaders – just as we did Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon – we will do it in Hodeida and Sanaa,” Katz said during an evening tribute Ministry of Defense personnel.
The Iran-backed group in Yemen has been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to enforce a naval blockade against Israel and says it is acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s years-long war in Gaza.
In late July, the political leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas was killed in Tehran in an assassination attempt that Iranian authorities blamed on Israel. At this point there was no direct claim of responsibility by Israel for the killing of Haniah.
Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, was the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy as the war sparked by the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel raged in Gaza. He had taken part in internationally mediated indirect talks on a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Months later, Israeli forces in Gaza killed Yahya Sinwar, Haniyeh’s successor and mastermind of the October 7 attack.
Syrian rebels overthrew the Assad regime earlier this month. Last week, Israeli forces moved into a portion of Syrian territory designated as a demilitarized zone. This sparked accusations that the country was exploiting the chaos in the region for a land grab.
