Iran arrests dozens in search for suspects in killing of Hamas leader

Iran has arrested more than two dozen people, including senior intelligence officers, military officials and staff workers at a military-run guesthouse in Tehran, in response to a huge and humiliating security breach that enabled the assassination of a top leader of Hamas, according to two Iranians familiar with the investigation.

The high-level arrests came after the killing in an explosion early Wednesday of Ismail Haniyeh, who had led Hamas’ political office in Qatar and was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president and staying at the guesthouse in northern Tehran, Iran’s capital.

The fervor of the response to the killing of Haniyeh underscores what a devastating security failure this was for Iran’s leadership, with the assassination occurring at a heavily guarded compound in the country’s capital within hours of the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new president.

“The perception that Iran can neither protect its homeland nor its key allies could be fatal for the Iranian regime, because it basically signals to its foes that if they can’t topple the Islamic Republic, they can decapitate it,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group.

Officials in the Middle East and in Iran itself have said the deadly blast was the result of a bomb that had been planted in Haniyeh’s room as long as two months before his arrival.

Iranian officials and Hamas said Wednesday that Israel was responsible for the assassination, an assessment also reached by several US officials. Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities, has not acknowledged that it was responsible for planting the bomb.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s specialized intelligence unit for espionage has taken over the investigation and is hunting down suspects that it hopes will lead it to members of the assassin team that planned, aided and carried out the killing, according to the two Iranian officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigations.

The news of the sweeping arrests came after the Guard announced in a statement that “the scope and details of this incident are under investigation and will be announced in due course.”

The Guard has not yet made public any details of the arrests nor of its investigation into the explosion, including its cause. But it has vowed a severe revenge, as has Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who issued an order to strike Israel in retaliation, according to the three Iranian officials.

The intensity and scope of the Guard’s investigation reveal the degree to which the assassination has shocked and rattled the country’s leadership.

The deadly blast, which also killed Haniyeh’s Palestinian bodyguard, wasn’t only an earth-shattering collapse of intelligence and security; nor only a failure to protect a key ally; nor evidence of the inability to curb the infiltration of Mossad; nor a humiliating reputational blow. It was all of those, and more.

Perhaps most important, it delivered a jarring realization that if Israel could target such an important guest, on a day when the capital was under heightened security, and carry out the attack at a highly secure compound equipped with bulletproof windows, air defense and radar, then no one was really safe.

“This security breach requires different policies and strategies; it may be arresting spies if there was infiltration, or retaliation if the operation was conducted from outside the borders, or a combination of both,” Sasan Karimi, a political analyst in Tehran, said in a telephone interview.

Haniyeh’s proximity to Iran’s supreme leader — with the two men meeting at Khamenei’s residence just hours before the assassination — has also raised concerns.

At Haniyeh’s funeral in Tehran on Friday, Khamenei was surrounded by a tighter circle of bodyguards than usual when he performed an Islamic prayer ritual on the body. He then left immediately, only pausing briefly to greet Haniyeh’s son.

Iran and Israel have been engaged in a covert war for years. Israel has assassinated more than a dozen nuclear scientists and military commanders inside Iran, including the country’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with an artificial-intelligence-assisted, remote-controlled killer robot in 2020. Israel has also sabotaged infrastructure, blowing up gas pipes in February, as well as conducting attacks on military and nuclear sites.

Iran has reeled after each attack and pledged to find the culprits. It has fired a top intelligence chief, arrested a military commander and announced multiple times that it has discovered an Israeli spy network.

Just four days before Haniyeh’s assassination, the country’s minister of intelligence, Esmail Khatib, said to local media that Iran had “disintegrated and destroyed a network of Mossad infiltrators who were every day assassinating some of our scientists and sabotaging our key facilities.”

Then came the shock of Haniyeh’s assassination.

After the attack, Iranian security agents raided the guesthouse compound, which belongs to the Guard and which is where Haniyeh frequently stayed — in the same room — on his visits to Tehran. The agents placed all the guesthouse’s staff members under quarantine, arrested some, and confiscated all electronic devices, including personal phones, according to the two Iranians.

A separate team of agents interrogated senior military and intelligence officials with roles in safeguarding the capital. It placed a number of them under arrest until investigations are completed, according to the two Iranians.

When the security agents raided the guesthouse compound, they combed through every inch of it, inspecting surveillance cameras dating back months as well as guest lists. They also were examining the comings and goings of staff members, who are strictly vetted before employment and drawn from the rank and file of the Guard as well as from the Basij, its paramilitary volunteer task force, the two Iranian officials said.

The investigation also focused on Tehran’s international and domestic airports, where agents have been stationed, looking through months of footage on cameras from the arrival and departure lounges and examining flight lists, the two Iranians said. They said that Iran believes members of Mossad’s assassin team are still in the country and their goal is to arrest them.

An Iranian member of the Guard, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said he was not aware of the arrests, but said that security protocols had been completely overhauled in the past two days for senior officials. The security details for senior officials were changed, and electronic equipment such as mobile phones swapped. He said some senior officials had been moved to a different location.