Ismail Haniyeh killed: The shadowy history of Israel’s attacks in Iran

From assassinations and raids to cyberattacks, Israel-linked plots have targeted Iran and its nuclear programme for years.

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in the Iranian capital, Tehran, along with one of his bodyguards.

In a statement announcing Haniyeh’s death, Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, blamed Israel for the assassination early on Wednesday, saying the building where he was staying was struck. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration on Tuesday for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

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Hamas said Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran” but did not include details of the attack in its statement. Israel, meanwhile, provided no immediate comment on Haniyeh’s death. Iranian authorities said they are investigating the attack.

Hamas’s allegation comes during Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 39,400 Palestinians over nearly 10 months. The war began on October 7 after Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel, which killed 1,139 people while more than 200 people were taken captive.

The assassination also comes after a years-long “shadow war” between Israel and Iran.

A particular target for Israel has been Iran’s nuclear programme. Israel has long accused Tehran of clandestinely building a nuclear bomb that could threaten its existence — and has publicly and frequently spoken of its diplomatic and intelligence-driven efforts to derail those alleged efforts. Iran denies that it has had a military nuclear programme while arguing that it has the right to develop civil nuclear energy.

Here’s a look at a range of attacks in Iran — from drone strikes and assassinations of scientists to cyberattacks and the theft of secrets — that Israel has either accepted it was behind or is accused of having orchestrated:

Drone strikes and raids on Iran

January 2018: Mossad agents raided a secure Tehran facility, stealing classified nuclear archives. In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel discovered 100,000 “secret files that prove” Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons programme.

February 2022: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal in December that Israel had carried out an attack on a drone base and assassinated a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in February of the previous year.

May 2022: Explosives-laden quadcopter suicide drones hit the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, killing an engineer and damaging a building where drones had been developed by the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami pledged retaliation against unspecified “enemies”.

January 2023: Several suicide drones targeted a military facility in central Isfahan, but they were thwarted and caused no damage, Iran’s Defence Ministry said. While Iran did not immediately place blame for the attack, its United Nations envoy, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote a letter to the UN chief saying, “Primary investigation suggested Israel was responsible.”

February 2024: A natural gas pipeline in Iran was attacked. Oil Minister Javad Owji alleged that the “explosion of the gas pipeline was an Israeli plot”.

April 2024: An Iranian consulate in Syria was hit by an air strike, killing seven people, including two Iranian generals and five officers, according to Iranian authorities who blamed Israel for the attack. Iran retaliated by attacking Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles. Following that, Iran brought down three drones in Isfahan province. US media reports suggested Israeli missiles had hit an Iranian site.

Assassinations of Iranian scientists

January 2010: A physics professor at Tehran University, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb planted on his motorcycle. Iranian state media blamed the United States and Israel for the bombing. The Iranian government described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist.

November 2010: A professor in the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Majid Shahriari, was killed in a car explosion on his way to work. His wife was wounded. The president of Iran at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the US and Israel.

January 2012: Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemical engineering graduate, was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack and said Ahmadi Roshan was a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility in the city of Natanz.

November 2020: Prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot and killed while driving outside Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. He was sanctioned by the UN in 2007 and the US in 2008.

May 2022: Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei of the IRGC was shot five times outside his home in Tehran. Majid Mirahmadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the assassination was “definitely the work of Israel”.

Cyberattacks on Iran

June 2010: The Stuxnet virus was found in computers at the nuclear plant in Iran’s Bushehr city, and it spread from there to other facilities. As many as 30,000 computers across at least 14 facilities were impacted by September 2010. At least 1,000 out of 9,000 centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility were destroyed, according to an estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security. Upon investigation, Iran blamed Israel and the US for the virus attack.

April 2011: A virus called Stars was discovered by the Iranian cyberdefence agency, which said the malware was designed to infiltrate and damage Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran blamed Israel and the US.

November 2011: Iran said it discovered a new virus called Duqu, based on Stuxnet. Experts said Duqu was intended to gather data for future cyberattacks. The Duqu spyware was widely believed by experts to be linked to Israel.

April 2012: Iran blamed the US and Israel for malware called Wiper, which erased the hard drives of computers owned by the Ministry of Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Company.

May 2012: Iran announced that a virus called Flame had been used to try to steal data from government computers. The Washington Post reported that Israel and the US had used it to collect intelligence. Then-Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not confirm the nation’s involvement but acknowledged that Israel would use all means to “harm the Iranian nuclear system”.

October 2018: The Iranian government said it had blocked an attack by a new generation of Stuxnet and blamed Israel.

October 2021: A cyberattack hit the system that allows Iranians to use government-issued cards to buy fuel at a subsidised rate, affecting all 4,300 petrol stations in Iran. Consumers had to either pay the regular price, more than double the subsidised one, or wait for stations to reconnect to the central distribution system. Iran blamed Israel and the US.

May 2020: A cyberattack impacted computers that control maritime traffic at Shahid Rajaee port on Iran’s southern coast in the Gulf, creating a hold-up of ships waiting to dock. The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying Israel was behind the attack although Israel did not claim responsibility.