CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday acknowledged for the first time publicly that Israel had killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July, raising the risk of tensions between Tehran and its arch-foe Israel in a war-torn region. Israel on Gaza. Gaza and the conflict in Lebanon.
He added: “These days, when the terrorist Houthi organization fires missiles at Israel, I want to convey to them a clear message at the beginning of my speech: We defeated Hamas, we defeated Hezbollah, we blinded Iran's defense systems and we harmed the Iranian regime.” Katz said: “We overthrew the Assad regime in Syria, and we dealt a severe blow to the axis of evil, and we will also deal a harsh blow to the terrorist Houthi organization in Yemen, which is still the last one standing.” .
Katz said during a tribute evening that Israel “will destroy their strategic infrastructure and we will behead their leaders – just as we did with Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon – we will do it in Hodeidah and Sanaa.” Ministry of Defense employees.
The Iran-backed group in Yemen has been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea for more than a year in an attempt to impose a naval blockade on Israel, saying it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Israel's year-long war in Gaza.
In late July, the political leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was killed in Tehran in an assassination that Iranian authorities blamed on Israel. Israel did not directly claim responsibility for Haniyeh's killing at the time.
Haniyeh, who usually resides in Qatar, was the face of Hamas' international diplomacy as the war in Gaza raged due to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7. He was participating in indirect talks with international mediation to reach a ceasefire in the Palestinian Strip.
Months later, Israeli forces in Gaza killed Yahya Sinwar, Haniyeh's successor and the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack, which sparked the latest bloodshed in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
