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As the Middle East braces for a possible war between Israel and Iran, mystery surrounds the spectacular Israeli intelligence operation to assassinate the political leader of Hamas.
The New York Times, quoting Iranian officials, reported last week that Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader, was killed by an explosive device smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse months before it blew up in the room where he was staying.
Photos of the high-rise building where the assassination took place were released by Iran. They showed a shroud covering a portion of the building where the explosion took place.
Iran’s government said the killing was the result of an unspecified “severe explosion” outside the guesthouse where Haniyeh was staying. The publication Pasdaran reported the Hamas leader was blown up by “a short-range projectile carrying about 7 kilograms of explosive materials and launched from outside the guest’s residence.”
Other reports said the attack was the result of an air-launched missile strike from an Israeli F-35.
Another account published Monday by The Jewish Chronicle, a British newspaper, reported Haniyeh was killed by a bomb placed under his bed by two Iranians recruited by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The agents worked within the Ansar al-Mahdi security unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the unit in charge of securing the building and its guests.
That report stated that the two guards behind the bombing were seen on video the day of the assassination entering the bedroom.
None of the four versions of the operation have been confirmed.
Intelligence analysts, however, say those who conduct such high-risk operations likely put out deceptive or misleading cover stories as part of the operation to protect the sources and methods that could be used again in the future.
Former National Security Agency counterintelligence official John Schindler said the Israeli hit on Haniyeh was a “spectacular” operation.
Mossad has conducted assassinations in the past in Iran, notably using hit men on motorcycles to kill several Iranian nuclear scientists. But none of those hits were on the level of the senior Hamas leader.
“What stands out is that Israel possesses not just effective long-range strike capabilities across the Middle East, but detailed real-time intelligence too,” Mr. Schindler wrote on his “Top Secret Umbra” blog. “It required a great deal of actionable and timely intelligence to know exactly where Haniyeh was, and when. Attacks by the [Israeli military] in Gaza or Lebanon are one thing, while a strike on an IRGC compound in Tehran is entirely another in both operational and intelligence terms.”
Mr. Schindler believes the accounts fed to Western journalists on the assassination will induce record-breaking levels of security paranoia within Iran over Israeli spy penetrations.
“If we’re lucky, the Iranians and their terrorist pets will go overboard with their aggressive mole hunt,” he said.
The former counterspy said that a foreign counterintelligence operation fueled suspicions of spy penetration among terrorists in the Abu Nidal Organization.
The operation in the 1980s induced terror leader Abu Nidal to kill 600 of his confederates in a search for internal traitors. “Amateurs kill terrorists; professionals induce the terrorists to kill each other,” Mr. Schindler said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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