Call him Ismail — but when you do, refer to him in the past tense.
On Thursday, we learned that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who has been living in luxury in Qatar, was taken out by an explosive device placed in a guest house room in Tehran months ago and remotely detonated. Haniyeh was in Iran for the swearing-in of Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, which was scheduled for Tuesday. Haniyeh's pronouns have now been permanently changed to "was" and "were."
The assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was carried out in Tehran this week using an explosive device that was hidden months ago inside the guesthouse where he was staying, a report says.
The bomb ended up being remotely detonated around 2 a.m. local time Wednesday, killing Haniyeh and a bodyguard at the compound protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the northern part of Iran’s capital, Middle Eastern officials told The New York Times.
Haniyeh was in Tehran for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's swearing-in on Tuesday. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital about the report.
As of this writing, it's not known who was behind this, but the one apparent thing is that some serious planning went into this — and whoever carried it out was patient, as the device was planted some months before Haniyeh's arrival.
Israel has not come out publicly to claim responsibility for the killing, but Iran and Hamas are blaming the Jewish State for being behind it, according to The Associated Press.
Three Iranian officials separately told The New York Times that the security breach that allowed the explosive device to find its way into the compound where Haniyeh was residing – which is used by the Guards for secret meetings and housing prominent guests – is a massive embarrassment to the military agency.
A massive embarrassment for Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but frankly, the world is a better place without this guy in it.
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The assassination was originally reported on Wednesday.
Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman and now a Senior Fellow at FDD told Fox News Digital that "The assassination of Hamas terrorist Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, after Haniyeh reportedly met with the Supreme Leader of Iran, is almost poetic in choice of location and timing. If indeed accomplished by Israel, this assassination of a key architect and enabler of the October 7 massacre against Israel will send chills down Iranian spines, since it indicates the extent of intelligence penetration that Israeli security agencies have achieved in Iran"
While Israel has not claimed responsibility for this, one could scarcely blame them for wanting this guy removed; retribution is, after all, a powerful motivator, and this guy was the leader of the group that carried out the Oct. 7th atrocities. Isreal will, after all, be blamed for Haniyeh's being un-alived whether they were involved or not.
No matter who planted this device, it's an effective little piece of retribution for Oct 7th. And you know what the thing is about revenge? It's patient.
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