Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reportedly ordered a direct strike on Israel in retaliation for what it said was the assassination of Hamas’ top leader while in Tehran.
Ayatollah Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning (Thursday AEST), The New York Times reported, citing three Iranian officials that it did not identify.
Ayatollah Khamenei has already publicly threatened retaliation in fiery but predictable language. Reading a statement on state television, he said Iran has a “duty to seek vengeance” and that Israel should expect a “severe punishment”.
If carried out, a direct strike risks further tilting the region toward a wider conflict. In April, Iran and Israel exchanged direct fire for the first time, but in a calibrated measure that avoided escalation.
The threat comes after Iran and Hamas said Israel assassinated the group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an airstrike in Iran’s capital. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will exact a very heavy price from any aggression against us on any front”, without mentioning the killing. “There are challenging days ahead,” he added.
Israel had pledged to kill Mr Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. The strike came just after Mr Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran – and hours after Israel targeted a top commander in Iran’s ally Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Earlier, Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of Palestinian resistance group Hamas, has been killed in Iran, according to a statement from Hamas and Iranian officials.
Hamas said its leader was killed early on Wednesday following an Israeli raid targeting his residence in Tehran. In a statement, the group mourned the death of Haniyeh, 62, who it said was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
Haniyeh, a prominent figure in the Palestinian political and resistance group, has been a key public figure before and during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The Iranian government has announced an investigation into the killing, with results expected to be released soon.
“The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, him and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” said a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Sepah news website.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas
Analysts on Iranian state television immediately began blaming Israel for the attack.
Israel itself did not immediately comment but it often doesn’t when it comes to assassination carried out by its notorious Mossad intelligence agency.
Israel is suspected of running a years-long assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and others.
