'Escalation dominance': Haniyeh killing shows Israel's high-risk assassination strategy

Experts suggest Israel has network of informants for high-profile assassinations but the strategy could have limited long-term impact

Mourners take part in a funeral ceremony for late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. AFP

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Confusion surrounded the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday, with conflicting reports suggesting Israel targeted his Tehran residence with an air strike, a projectile fired from the ground in Iran, or with a bomb planted there much earlier.

Hamas deputy leader Khalil Al Hayya said Mr Haniyeh was hit “directly” by a missile, destroying the room he was in, without offering more detail. According to sources quoted in a report by the New York Times on Thursday, the Hamas leader was killed when an explosive device smuggled into his residence about two months ago was detonated remotely.

Images were circulating on social media on Thursday purporting to show the damaged residence, near the Iranian government's Saadabad Palace, with part of the building having collapsed and covered by green netting. Neither Iran nor Hamas confirmed the precise location of the strike.

Whichever way, the killing of Mr Haniyeh would represent a significant advance in Israel’s capability to strike targets deep inside Iran which, in theory, enjoys significant protection from its security forces and air defences.

It also follows a long pattern of sabotage of highly secure nuclear sites and killings of several figures linked to the country’s nuclear programme that suggest Israeli infiltration of Iran's security forces.

The most well-known killing was of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, reportedly by a satellite-controlled, vehicle-mounted FN rifle. He was one of at least six scientists assassinated in Iran since 2010.

As with Mr Haniyeh’s death, there were conflicting reports about Mr Fakhrizadeh's killing, with Iran denying sophisticated technology had been used.

These attacks attributed to Israel show an adeptness at identifying targets in Iran, not only for assassination but for other operations, such as the theft of about 50,000 nuclear programme documents from a warehouse near the capital in 2018.

Despite massive advances in remote intelligence collection, such operations would require “human intelligence”, or local informants, experts say.

Iran’s air defences are considered too dense for Israeli drones such as the Hermes 900, which can loiter for hours monitoring targets with an array of powerful cameras, as well as carry out attacks. In any case, the Hermes, and even longer-range drones such as US-made Reapers, would not have the capability for such an operation, at least not if launched from Israel.

Furthermore, wartime leaders such as Mr Haniyeh would be expected to take extreme precautions against attempts and track them electronically.

Secret informants

“There is a history of Israeli intelligence operative penetration within Iranian borders, including assassinations of nuclear scientists and ballistic missile figures,” says Mark Pyruz, a security analyst focused on anti-regime sentiment and protests in Iran.

“There have also been recent UAV [drone] strike incidents, possibly launched from within Iran, such as the facility in Isfahan and the SAM [surface-to-air missile] site near Shahid Major General Abbas Babaei airbase.”

Iran issued conflicting reports about those attacks in April, which came days after it launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in response to an air strike that killed two senior Iranian generals working with Tehran-backed militias in Damascus.

Analysts said images of a piece of a missile booster found in Iraq suggested Israel had penetrated Iran's defences with an air-launched ballistic missile fired from outside Iranian airspace.

If that was the case, the strike involved pinpoint accuracy from considerable range and a capability to overcome Iran’s S-300 air defence system through sheer speed.

But the air defence site was a static target, visible to Israel’s small number of reconnaissance satellites and even on commercial satellite imagery.

Mr Haniyeh, by contrast, was a moving target on an official visit, who would have had a varied schedule only insiders would know.

Mr Pyruz says the Israeli intelligence service Mossad would have had a wide range of regime enemies to draw on as informants on Mr Haniyeh’s movements.

Iran periodically announces the arrest of individuals or groups allegedly working for Israel.

“A level of co-operation with armed separatist groups operating inside Iran is also documented,” Mr Pyruz says. “Then there is also the heightened risk inherent with a relatively large discontented and disaffected segment of the populace – a point referenced by internal Iranian security studies.”

Philip Smyth, an expert on Shiite militant groups in the region, says other motivations for double agents could be bitterness over the handling of Iran’s many regional wars and corruption scandals that have rocked the ostensibly pious regime.

“The corruption is some of the worst, I'm sure it's a driver, too,” he says.

Iran has been accused of recruiting thousands of militia fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and farther afield, sending them to fight in Syria in austere conditions, with some accusing the regime of using them as cannon fodder.

Israel's history of assassinations

Regardless of the exact method, the attack on Mr Haniyeh points to Israel leaping up the ladder of escalation, from tactical to strategic strikes.

The former affect near-term operations and range from strikes on enemy field commanders in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria to the targeting of weapons experts, such as the 2018 car bombing in Hama, Syria, that killed ballistic missile expert Aziz Asbar.

At the strategic end are killings of senior leaders that aim to exert a political impact and change the methods of foes.

“Location is very important. Showing long reach and hard-target penetration, as in Dahieh [Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold], Tehran and Damascus. Lots of capability demonstration and increased effort to shock and deter,” says Michael Knights, security expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The killing of Mr Haniyeh, and to a lesser extent senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut on Tuesday – the second time Israel has targeted the Lebanese capital since the strike that killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh Azouri in March – represent Israel’s willingness to cross red lines.

Those with perceived political capital are targets, too, such as Yasser Kranbish, who was described as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s bodyguard.

Zones considered by many to be conflict free, such as capital cities, are not off limits.

Hezbollah’s second in command, Imad Mugniyeh, was killed in a Damascus car bombing in 2008, for example.

Notoriously, Israel sent Mossad assassins after Palestinian militants in Europe and Lebanon after the 1972 Munich massacre, killing men in Paris, Rome and Beirut.

An air strike on the Palestinian Liberation Headquarters in Tunis in 1985 killed scores of people. In 1990, a Canadian weapons scientist working with Iraq was shot dead in the Netherlands, in what was also thought to be a Mossad operation.

Expanded further, Israel considers areas populated by civilians as legitimate targets if it suspects militants are present, as has been the case in Gaza. An air strike last month targeting Hamas commander Mohammed Deif killed at least 90 people near what the Israeli military had declared a humanitarian zone.

“Killing low level is important work but doesn't restore confidence in Israel's QME,” Mr Knights says, referring to what the US calls Israel’s need for a “qualitative military edge” in the region.

“The US has learnt the same lesson – the Resistance Axis will swap high-level commander deaths for foot soldier deaths all day long,” he adds, referring to the Iran-backed coalition comprising Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and various Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian militias.

Israel’s latest strikes, Mr Knights says, represent “escalation dominance”.

Commenting on the failure of security services, Mr Pyruz says: “The Haniyeh assassination may not be so much a technical or organisational leap.”

It was, however, “extraordinary in targeting subject and location”.

Mr Pyruz has a grim outlook for the now 42-year long Iran-Israel conflict, and the current regional escalation.

“Assassinations, while serving to perpetuate conflict dynamics, are not in themselves expected to alter the fundamental reality. For the Axis of Resistance, these are further cases of attrition and replacement, part of a commitment to a long struggle.”