What has occurred to Hamas targets on Benjamin Netanyahu’s hit checklist

Iran‘s supreme leader has vowed to inflict ‘severe punishment’ on Israel after the political head of Hamas was assassinated in Tehran early yesterday.

Ismail Haniyeh, 62, was killed with a guided missile ‘launched from within Iran’ in a 2am attack that risks sparking an all-out regional war.

Experts say he was the fourth hit on an Israeli ‘kill list’ of Hamas leaders drawn up after October 7, with only two still alive.

Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, 58, was targeted in a strike on Khan Yunis last month, although his death has not yet been confirmed.

The terror group’s deputy chairman Saleh Al-Arouri, 57, was killed by a drone in Beirut in January, while deputy military commander Marwan Issa, 59, died in an air strike in Gaza last March.

Meanwhile, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, 61, is hiding in the territory’s vast tunnel network, while 68-year-old Khaled Mashal, head of Hamas’s overseas political bureau, is alive in Doha, Qatar.

Yesterday’s strike, for which Israel has not claimed responsibility, is embarrassing for Tehran, coming straight after the inauguration of its new president.

Only 12 hours earlier, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, the military leader of Hezbollah and another Iranian proxy, after 12 Israeli Druze children were killed in a rocket attack last weekend.

The Middle East is already dangerously unstable due to the war in Gaza – where nearly 40,000 have died – but now it risks spreading into a regional conflagration.

Israel was last night bracing for a multi-front response from Iran, which has proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged to avenge the death of Haniyeh, saying it was ‘Tehran’s duty’.

‘With this action, the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime has paved the way for its own severe punishment,’ the supreme leader said.

Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for the inauguration of president Masoud Pezeshkian on the day before his death and joined in chants of: ‘Death to Israel, death to America.’

Mr Pezeshkian warned Israel it would ‘regret this cowardly killing’.

It was initially reported that the Hamas political chief was killed by a drone or aerial strike. But last night local media claimed his bedroom was targeted by a short-range Israeli-made Spike missile launched from a building nearby .

Haniyeh was killed with his bodyguard in the official guest house of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Shahran neighbourhood in the north of the capital.

Iranian media reported that the terror leader’s close protection team leaked information leading to his assassination.

The Iranian regime is reportedly in shock over the strike in the heart of its own territory. Ismail Khatib, Tehran’s minister of intelligence, recently claimed to have ‘dismantled [the Israeli secret service] Mossad’s infiltration network’, calling it a ‘turning point’ for the ministry.

There are fears that Iran could use proxies to hit Israeli embassies abroad. In Britain, the Community Security Trust urged members of the Jewish community to ‘keep gates and doors closed at all times’ and avoid ‘congregating outside communal buildings and events’.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not confirmed the strike, with the Israel Defence Forces saying it is conducting a ‘situation assessment’, but vowed his country was ‘prepared for all scenarios’.

Israelis were yesterday celebrating the death of one of their biggest enemies.

Amos Yadlin, ex-IDF intelligence chief, said there were now only two key Hamas leaders left to kill after Haniyeh’s death.

‘Israel is basically implementing here the Munich Olympics revenge that took about a decade to assassinate all those who were involved in Munich 72 massacre,’ he added.

‘We are now four out of six of the top leaders that have already been punished for what they have done for October 7.’

It is feared the latest killing could derail hostage negotiations that appeared to be edging towards a compromise. 

Haniyeh, based in Doha, Qatar, was one of the key players in the November ceasefire and was heavily involved in talks.

Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said: ‘How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?’

Major General Yadlin said the attack might ‘freeze the negotiations’ but would make Hamas leaders realise Israel could come for them next, which ‘will improve the chances’.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said America was ‘not aware of or involved in’ the attack and that ‘nothing takes away from the importance of getting to the ceasefire’.