Assassination of Haniyeh reveals a new chink in the IRGC's armor - opinion

Recent events continue to evidence the weakness and deep deterioration of Iran’s internal security system. This trend has been visible since the November 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, considered the mastermind behind Iran’s nuclear program (killed in an ambush near Tehran) to the death of former president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, explained away in fatalistic terms, without any official announcement of the final results of the investigation.

There was the January 2020 assassination of former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRCG) commander Qasem Soleimani in an American airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq – and now the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, in a residential area fully controlled by the IRCG.

Haniyeh’s assassination stands out as the most painful and impactful blow to the Iranian regime, primarily because the operation was carried out with extreme precision under circumstances that prevented the Iranian regime from dealing with it as usual by simply absorbing the blow, regardless of the victim’s importance (as was even the case with someone as significant as the country’s president).

However, Haniyeh was assassinated while sleeping in what the Iranian regime considers its “safest” area. The attack was humiliating for IRGC and its claims of cutting-edge technological and security capabilities. The regime immediately understood the magnitude of the insult it had suffered, prompting the Iranian prosecutor general, a few hours after the fact, to implicitly acknowledge what he described as “negligence,” vowing to hold those responsible accountable.

THIS IS unprecedented behavior from Iran, which has never admitted to “negligence” in previous security breaches. The regime refuses, of course, to call things by their real names or acknowledge the existence of gross corruption and wholesale betrayal within this militia, not subject to any accountability or oversight of any kind.

This time, the Islamic Republic was upset because it was unable to cover up this affront to its national dignity, evidence of its inability to protect a VIP participating in the new president’s inauguration ceremony.

Iran has become accustomed to the targeting of its military leaders and nuclear experts, assassinated one after the other in recent years. Fakhrizadeh was not the first nuclear scientist to be assassinated (in November 2020) in the heart of Tehran. He was preceded by other officials earlier that the same year, attacked within 20 minutes of each other. The first was killed, and the second was injured. Those strikes were followed by the assassinations of a senior general in the IRGC and a senior engineer at an Iranian nuclear facility. The list goes on. 

In recent years, killings, reported suicides and deaths in mysterious circumstances had put an end to important personalities, including prominent space scientist Ayoub Entezari, who was said to have been poisoned in the circumstances similar to nuclear scientist Kamran Mollapour at the Natanz facility. 

To say nothing of the scandal of smuggling out tons of secret documents related to the Iranian nuclear program, in an intelligence catastrophe that left Tehran with no choice but to claim that the documents were not important – and the breaching of security systems in Iran’s top nuclear reactors, whether by electronic attacks or setting fires and disrupting operating systems.

This time, the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guards have been caught with their pants down before the entire world, exposed to their weakness, failure, and undoing. The reason is that the victim, Ismail Haniyeh, was of interest due to the ongoing war in Gaza and because he was among the heads of Hamas, one of Iran’s key terrorist militia arms in the Middle East.

Haniyeh was assassinated in a location believed to be totally beyond the reach of his adversaries; he was spending the night in a residential headquarters of the IRGC in northern Tehran. The presence of only a single security escort for a person of Haniyeh’s stature evidenced the sense of reassurance and confidence in the surrounding security measures.

Growing evidence of ineffectiveness and security within the IRGC

There is abundant evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness and breakdown of security protocols within the IRGC. Numerous high-ranking officials have been eliminated, both within Iran and abroad, using diverse tactics and strategies. This reveals a critical lack of security awareness, coupled with recurring breaches, betrayals, and violations of existing safety protocols. The absence of any meaningful review of these procedures can be attributed to the pervasive arrogance and overconfidence endemic to the Iranian regime.

THIS IS not a conclusion but a reality discussed by one of the largest pro-hardline newspapers in Iran. 

The day after Haniyeh’s assassination, the Islamic Republic daily, Jomhouri Eslami, wrote that “the most important aspect of this incident is how Israel reached Haniyeh with such ease, in the heart of Tehran.”

The newspaper pointed out that, since the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh, it had called for “reviewing the security defect in the guard teams for these personalities and senior officials in Iran because the ease of access to targets and eliminating them in this way confirms the existence of infiltration and infiltrators within these security groups tasked with guarding senior officials and military leaders.”

It said, “There are no listening ears to its calls to purge the security and guard teams of infiltrators and agents.” 

The newspaper also notably criticized the recurring rhetoric of retaliation that fails to materialize into concrete action. It argued that, instead of constantly discussing revenge, the focus should be on rooting out infiltrators and holding them accountable to prevent future assassinations. 

The paper further claimed that these infiltrators and Israeli agents had managed to climb to prominent positions within Iran through elaborate schemes of deception and fraud.

In my view, the rhetoric of Jomhouri Eslami could set the stage for Iran to side-step a forceful response to Haniyeh’s assassination despite its official promises. This narrative offers a convenient excuse to avoid retaliation, claiming that Iran’s priority is to cleanse the internal ranks of suspected infiltrators.

The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.