Iranian netizens speculate about Hamas leader’s assassination

Iranians have taken to social media to express their views on Ismail Haniyeh’s targeted killing in Tehran, raising concerns about the security and intelligence agencies’ failure to protect him.

The political leader of Hamas who had traveled to Tehran to participate in the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian Tuesday was targeted at a highly guarded compound set within a park at the foothills of high mountains in the northern Niavaran district in the early hours of Wednesday.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has vowed revenge for Haniyeh’s killing without specifying its type. Still, ultra-hardliners on social media are demanding a missile and drone strike on Israel similar to the attack in April dubbed “Operation True Promise” with the hashtag “Operation True Promise 2”.

Iranian netizens are extensively speculating about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s possible motivations in choosing the time and place of the assassination. They are concerned that a retaliation, if Khamenei decides to strike Israel again, may ignite a full-on regional war.

“Haniyeh’s assassination in the heart of Tehran was the most humiliating action against the Islamic Republic that Israel or America have taken in recent years,” a dissident netizen posted on X.

“It was even more humiliating than the killing of [Qasem] Soleimani,” he wrote while pointing out that Soleimani was killed under very different circumstances in a different country where Iran did not exercise its own intelligence and security controls.

There are allegations of significant Israeli infiltration within these agencies, which many Iranians claim are diverting their resources to suppress intellectuals and activists, and to crack down on women for hijab violations, rather than focusing on real threats.

These agencies are predominantly under the control of hardliners and ultra-hardliners. Some netizens are alleging that these agencies have been heavily infested with Israeli infiltrators and spies given the many operations that Jerusalem is believed to have conducted in Iran since 2010.

“Iran's intelligence and security apparatus has been totally destroyed since [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s time [in office],” a tweet about the assassination contended while holding “spies and infiltrators” responsible for the intelligence failure in this instance.

“Tehran has practically become the stage for Israel’s operations! The best place for Israel to assassinate Haniyeh was Tehran so that it would not entail problems in its relations with Arab [states] for assassination on their soil and to show off its power in Tehran,” a post on X said about the choice of location for the operation.

Netizens are also extensively speculating about the equipment -- a quadcopter, a drone, or a cruise missile, and the possible involvement of a “neighboring country” from where the attack could have been launched.

In a tweet, journalist Ata Bahrami asked why no one heard the blast in Niavaran if Haniyeh was targeted by a rocket launched from outside Iran which could have caused a massive explosion. “The assassination was done from inside [the country]!” he speculated.

“The problem now is not whether it was a missile or a knife [that killed Haniyeh]. The message and the security disaster is what matters,” another netizen responded to such speculations. 

Others have accused the Israeli Prime Minister of seeking to sabotage any future talks between the new government in Tehran and Washington that could improve their relations.

“The cowardly Zionists always try to sabotage whenever they feel talks and improvement of the situation is possible,” one of them posted on X.

Iran's former Communications Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi who played a major role in Pezeshkian’s campaign in a tweet has similarly accused Israel of trying to sabotage Pezeshkian’s promised efforts to improve Iran's relations with the world.

“The people of the world should know that the occupying Zionist regime committed a terrorist act on the same day that the Iranian President, on his first day in office, called the world to peace and friendship,” Azari-Jahromi wrote while calling Israel a “cancerous tumor” that threatens peace in the whole world. He failed to mention that during Pezeshkian's swearing-in ceremony in parliament those present were chanting "death to America."

Expatriate journalist Dariush Memar responded to Azari-Jahromi that the Islamic Republic cannot form “the biggest terrorist network in the world” and invite its leaders to the inauguration of its president while calling the world to peace and calm. “The world cannot be deceived,” he tweeted. Other netizens have expressed similar views.