Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz admitted on Monday for the first time publicly that Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July, further risking tensions between Tehran and arch-enemy Israel in a region shaken by Israel’s war in Gaza and the conflict in Lebanon.
He said Israel has defeated Hamas and Hezbollah, “blinded” Iran’s defence systems and damaged its production systems. He also said the country had toppled the Assad regime in Syria, dealing a severe blow to what he called “the axis of evil.”
“We will also deal a severe blow to the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, which remains the last to stand.”
Israel will “damage their strategic infrastructure, and we will behead their leaders — just as we did to Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon — we will do it in Hodeidah and Sana’a,” Katz said during an evening honouring Defence Ministry personnel.
The Iran-backed group in Yemen has been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade on Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.
In late July, the political leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas was killed in Tehran in an assassination that Iranian authorities blamed on Israel. There was no direct claim of responsibility by Israel for the killing of Haniyeh at the time.
Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, had been the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy as the war, set off by the attack the group led on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has raged in Gaza. He had been taking part in internationally brokered indirect talks on reaching a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Months after, Israeli forces in Gaza killed Yahya Sinwar, Haniyeh’s successor and the mastermind of the Oct. 7, attack.
Earlier this month, Syrian rebels toppled the Assad regime. Israeli forces moved into a part of Syrian territory that is meant to be a demilitarized zone last week, sparking accusations that the country was taking advantage of the chaos in the region to make a land grab.
