Iran reiterates right to respond over Haniyeh’s assassination
Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani spoke to his Egyptian counterpart on Saturday and said that Tehran “reserves the right to a legitimate response” against Israel over the assassination of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh, according to the IRNA news agency.
The killing on July 31 is widely blamed on Israel though it has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Bagheri Kani described the Israeli government as a “criminal gang” and rebuked the United States for supporting the country in its war on Gaza.
He added that the US cannot be a neutral mediator in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations due to its unwavering support for Israel, which makes it complicit in the crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.
Phone call lured Hezbollah’s Shukr to killing location: WSJ report
Senior military commander Fuad Shukr received a phone call to go to the seventh floor of his residential building in Beirut before he was assassinated by an Israeli air attack, according to The Wall Street Journal quoting an unnamed Hezbollah official.
“The call to draw Shukr to the seventh floor, where he would be easier to target amid the surrounding buildings, likely came from someone who had breached Hezbollah’s internal communications network,” the official reportedly said.
The official added Hezbollah and Iran continue to investigate the intelligence failure, but believe that Israel beat the group’s countersurveillance system, the report added.
Israel assassinated Shukr on July 31, prompting vows of retaliation from the Lebanese movement.
