Former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in a high-security guesthouse in Iran’s capital Tehran in July
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For the first time, Israel on Monday (December 24) admitted assassinating former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
In a warning to Yemen-based, Iran-based Houthis, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that they would meet a fate similar to the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah who have been killed over the past year.
“We will strike hard at the Houthis … and decapitate their leadership – just as we did with Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar, and [Hassan] Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon, we will do so in Hodeida and Sanaa,” said Katz.
Former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in in Iran’s capital Tehran in July. He was killed hours after attending the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in the guesthouse where he was staying. Even though Israel was understood to be behind the assassination from the beginning, Israel never admitted to it until Monday.
Katz went on to hail how Israel has battered Iran and its allies in West Asia.
Katz said, “These days, when the Houthi terrorist organization is firing missiles at Israel, I want to convey a clear message to them at the beginning of my remarks: We have defeated Hamas, we have defeated Hezbollah, we have blinded Iran’s defense systems and damaged the production systems, we have toppled the Assad regime in Syria, we have dealt a severe blow to the axis of evil, and we will also deal a severe blow to the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, which remains the last to stand.”
Months after Haniyeh’s assassination, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in September in airstrikes on the terrorist group’s facilities in Beirut. The next month, Haniyeh’s successor, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in a gunfight in the Gaza Strip.