Iran’s intelligence minister says the Israeli regime’s assassination of senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran was carried out with Washington's approval.
Ismail Khatib made the remarks on Friday in a message of condolence that he issued on the occasion of Haniyeh’s martyrdom.
The assassination claimed the lives of Haniyeh, the Palestinian resistance movement’s Political Bureau chief, and one of his bodyguards in the Iranian capital on Wednesday.
The resistance leader was in the city to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“Martyr Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination took place at the hands of the usurping Zionists with the United States’ greenlight,” he said.
Throughout decades, Washington has unexceptionally defended the regime against punitive international measures, served as its biggest arms purveyor, and provided it with close intelligence cooperation toward both protecting it and facilitating its desired atrocities.
“The assassination once again put the Zionist regime’s bestial nature on display,” Khatib added.
The minister also suggested that the Israeli regime had perpetrated the assassination in reprisal for the resistance’s successful implementation of the al-Aqsa Storm operation.
The operation saw the Gaza Strip’s resistance movements, including Hamas, staging a uniquely daring retaliatory attack against the occupied Palestinian territories on October 7, capturing hundreds of Israeli troops and settlers.
The assassination “is beyond doubt an indication of al-Aqsa Storm’s victory and a sign of the regime’s disintegration,” Khatib said.
The remarks echoed those made by the late Hamas’s leader following the operation, during which he said, “The Al-Aqsa Storm operation marked the beginning of the disappearance of the occupation of our land.”