Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has recounted a sequence of events that placed him in close proximity to one of the Middle East's most high-profile assassinations in recent years -- the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Speaking at a book launch, Gadkari described how he encountered Haniyeh only hours before the Hamas leader was assassinated in a heavily guarded military complex in the Iranian capital.
Gadkari said he had travelled to Iran at the request of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who asked him to represent India at the swearing-in ceremony of Iran's newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Ahead of the ceremony, Gadkari said, he was present at a five-star hotel in Tehran where heads of state and senior dignitaries from multiple countries had gathered informally over tea and coffee.
"All the heads of various nations were present, but one person who wasn't a head of state was Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. I met him. I saw him going to the swearing-in ceremony along with the President and the Chief Justice," Gadkari said.
"After the swearing-in ceremony, I returned to my hotel, but around 4 am, the Iranian ambassador to India came to me and said we had to leave. I asked what happened, and he told me that the Hamas chief had been assassinated. I was shocked and asked how it happened, and he said, 'I don't know yet,'" the minister added.
The assassination, Iranian authorities later confirmed, had taken place at around 1:15 am on July 31. Haniyeh was staying in a highly secure military complex under the supervision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). His bodyguard was also killed in the attack.
Gadkari told the audience that even now, there remains uncertainty about how the Hamas leader was killed.
"Some people say he was killed because of using his mobile phone. Some say it happened in some other way," he said.
At the same event, Gadkari said that if a country is strong, "no country can lay a hand on it," citing Israel as an example -- a small state, he argued, that has asserted global influence through technological sophistication and military capability.
The IRGC had said then that a short-range missile had been used to target the building where Haniyeh was staying. The attack occurred while Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend President Pezeshkian's inauguration.
The Mossad Theory
According to a Telegraph report, Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, enlisted Iranian security agents to plant explosives inside the building where Haniyeh was staying.
The report said the original plan had been to assassinate Haniyeh during an earlier visit to Tehran in May, when he attended the funeral of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. That operation was reportedly abandoned due to the size of the crowds, which officials feared would increase the risk of failure or exposure.
The revised plan focused on an IRGC guesthouse in northern Tehran -- a location assessed to be a likely accommodation site for the Hamas leader.
According to two Iranian officials cited by The Telegraph, two agents operating under Mossad's direction placed explosive devices in three separate rooms of the guesthouse. Surveillance footage, held by Iranian authorities, allegedly shows the operatives entering and exiting multiple rooms within minutes.
After planting the devices, the agents are said to have left Iran undetected, while maintaining at least one source inside the country. Around 2 am, the explosives in the room where Haniyeh was staying were remotely detonated.
Officials within the IRGC have since acknowledged the scale of the failure. One senior IRGC official told The Telegraph that Mossad had likely used agents from the Ansar-al-Mahdi protection unit -- a group tasked with safeguarding senior Iranian and allied officials both inside and outside the country.
