Ismail Haniyeh was killed Tuesday after he left his save haven in Qatar this week to attend Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Israel has been targeting and killing top Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in northern Israel.
Initial reports suspected an Israeli air strike, such as a drone, took him out. Days later, intelligence sources with first-hand knowledge told The New York Times that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb placed in his guestroom. The bomb was then detonated remotely by Mossad when he entered, the Times reported in a story published today, August 1.
Bob Maginnis, a national security expert at the Family Research Council, told AFN before the Times story broke that he suspected Mossad has used a drone to get to the Hamas leader.
“Clearly, Israel has agents inside Iran and able to make things happen,” he said. “So there's all sorts of ways in which this could have been done.”
Regardless of how Israel accomplished it, the “good news” is Haniyeh is gone, Maginnis added.
Reacting to the successful Mossad operation, military expert John Wells told AFN he, too, was curious how Israel took out Haniyeh.
“My reaction is one word: good,” Wells, a retired naval commander-turned-attorney, told AFN. “I think it's something that needed to be done. That guy was directly responsible for October 7th.”
