The Telegraph Claims: Haniyeh Killed with Help from 'Elements Inside the IRGC', Employed by Mossad

The British newspaper The Telegraph reported on Friday, August 12, that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, had bombed the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran by employing forces from the IRGC. According to the report, security agents from the IRGC's Ansar al-Mahdi, responsible for protecting locations and personalities, collaborated with Mossad to plant explosives in three separate rooms of the building where Haniyeh primarily resided, detonating it from outside Iran on Wednesday morning, August 10. The Telegraph reported that the operatives were seen on surveillance cameras secretly entering the rooms and exiting after a few minutes. It is said that these individuals left the country before the operation on Wednesday but were connected to a liaison inside Iran. The Telegraph also noted that the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was planned to coincide with the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, but due to crowding inside the building and the potential for failure, the operation did not proceed. An IRGC official told The Telegraph that they are now certain that Mossad employed elements from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit. He also added, 'After further investigations, additional bombs were discovered in two other rooms.' Another IRGC official stated that this operation represents a significant humiliation for the Islamic Republic and a major security breach. This official added that currently, factions within the IRGC are blaming each other for the failure, and Ismail Qaani, the commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, has ordered the expulsion, arrest, and possibly execution of several suspicious IRGC members. It is reported that Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has summoned all senior military commanders several times in the past two days, demanding accountability. The killing of Ismail Haniyeh in the capital of Iran has heightened concerns about Israel's infiltration and capability to conduct operations within Iran. Ali Younesi, a former intelligence minister of the Islamic Republic, stated in an interview in 2020, 'All officials of the Islamic Republic should be concerned for their lives, and if Israel has not targeted the political officials of the Islamic Republic so far, it is because it has not yet decided to do so.' Simultaneously, an aide to Masoud Pezeshkian told The Telegraph that 'this security breach' may have been deliberately created by the IRGC to damage the image of the 'new president' as the IRGC disagrees with his views on international diplomacy and other aspects of his reformist policies. Meanwhile, a Hamas official who was in the building where Haniyeh was killed on the night of the incident denied the claim of Haniyeh being killed 'by a bomb placed in his room in Tehran' and confirmed that he was targeted by a projectile. Khaled Qaddoumi, whom the United States considers 'the liaison between Hamas and the Iranian government,' told the London-based news outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 'From the appearance of the place after the attack and what transpired, and from the body of Ismail Haniyeh, it is clear that he was targeted by an aerial projectile like a missile.' He rejected the claim and report from The New York Times on Thursday that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb that had been planted in his residence in Tehran about two months prior, recounting the night of the incident: 'At exactly 1:37 AM, the building shook; the intensity of the shaking was such that I thought it was thunder or an earthquake. I opened the window and saw neither rain nor thunder; then we went to the fourth floor where Haniyeh was, and we realized that the wall and ceiling of the place where he was had collapsed, and he was killed.'