Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei will lead the prayers at Thursday’s funeral of assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Haniyeh’s body will be transported to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where he will be buried. Temporary flight restrictions were announced in Tehran’s skies ahead of Haniyeh’s funeral procession. The flight restrictions began at 6 AM Tehran time and will continue for five hours.
Ayatollah Khamenei has reportedly authorized a direct strike against Israel in retaliation. This decision was made during an urgent session of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, convened on Wednesday morning. The meeting took place shortly after Iran declared that Haniyeh had been killed. This information comes from three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards, who shared these details with the New York Times.
This past April, Iran launched its most significant and direct assault on Israel in recent history. The attack involved hundreds of missiles and drones, marking a dramatic escalation in the long-standing tension between the two nations. This aggressive move was Iran’s response to an earlier Israeli strike on a building adjacent to its embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, which resulted in the deaths of several high-ranking Iranian military officials. However, despite the scale of Iran’s retaliation effort, its impact was very limited. The attack was widely anticipated, allowing Israel and its Western and Arab allies to prepare their defenses. As a result, they successfully intercepted and neutralized the vast majority of the incoming weapons, minimizing the damage inflicted on Israeli targets.
The only victim of the Iranian attack, 7-year-old Bedouin girl Amina Alhousani who was hit in the head by shrapnel from an Iranian missile that was intercepted in the Arad area, and was taken to Soroka in critical condition – was released from intensive care on Sunday and started rehabilitation.
LOOK UP AT THE SKY
An angry Khamenei proclaimed that by assassinating Haniyeh, Israel had prepared the ground for its harsh punishment. Naturally, the supreme leader made sure no aircraft could fly overhead during the funeral – to avoid his own harsh punishment. Another major Shiite leader, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, remains in his bunker in Dahia, south Beirut, also to avoid harsh punishment.
Nasrallah is scheduled to speak Thursday afternoon from his bunker, to address the elimination of his number two official, Hezbollah Chief of Staff Fuad Shukr, by a surgical air attack.
It’s no wonder if you’re an Iranian or Iran-affiliated ruthless murderer, you look up at the sky a lot these days.
The Supreme Leader of Iran said, “We see avenging his blood our duty,” seeing as Haniyeh had been martyred while a guest of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
SUPREME LEADER ANGRY
The successful assassination dealt a severe blow to the Mullahs’ regime’s image, exposing vulnerabilities in its security apparatus despite its efforts to appear formidable. They have long struggled to counter Israel’s clandestine operations within its borders, and this latest breach only exacerbated their frustrations. The attack’s timing and location added to the embarrassment – targeting a high-profile figure like the arch-terrorist Haniyeh at a supposedly secure Revolutionary Guards facility, especially on a day of heightened alert in Tehran.
The assassination’s success, coupled with the presence of numerous senior Arab figures who came to celebrate the inauguration of a new Iranian president, sparked outrage among government supporters and officials. Many questioned how such an attack could occur, given that knowledge of Haniyeh’s whereabouts was supposedly limited to a select group of top security personnel. Social media buzzed with calls for immediate action, with some arguing that the country’s top priority should be a thorough internal review to ensure the safety of its leadership.
DEATH OF A PSYCHPATH
Mehr News noted that “Ayatollah Khamenei offered his condolences to the Islamic Ummah (nation), to the Resistance Front, to the brave and proud nation of Palestine, and especially to the family of Martyr Haniyeh and one of his companions who was martyred along with him.”
On that one – there aren’t as many Haniyeh family members as you might think. Three of his sons and four of his grandchildren were killed in an air strike in Gaza.
Again, look up at the sky more often if you’re a ruthless Arab murderer.
Haniyeh told Al Jazeera at the time, “The enemy will be delusional if it thinks that targeting my sons, at the climax of the negotiations and before the movement sends its response, will push Hamas to change its position.”
Say what you will, the man was all business.
Hamas Political Bureau member and a possible Haniyeh replacement Mousa Abu Marzook vowed to take revenge for Haniyeh’s martyrdom.
We know he looked up a lot before, during, and after taking his vow, because, you know, he got to take it.
