Mossad hired Iranian agents to plant bomb

Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, hired Iranian security agents to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where a Hamas leader was staying, The Telegraph in London has learned.

The original plan was to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of the Palestinian terror group, in May when he attended the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s former president.

The operation didn’t go ahead due to the crowds in the building and the likelihood of its failure, two Iranian officials told The Telegraph.

Instead, the two agents placed explosive devices in three rooms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) guesthouse in north Tehran where Haniyeh might stay.

The agents are said to have snuck out of the country but had a source still in Iran. They detonated the explosives from abroad.

The explosion killed Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

‘‘They are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit,’’ an official within the IRGC told The Telegraph from Tehran.

A second official within the elite military forces of the IRGC said: ‘‘This is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach.’’

There is now an internal blame game in the IRGC, with different sectors accusing each other of the failure, the first official said.

Esmail Qaani, the commander of the IRGC Quds force, has been summoning people to be fired, arrested and possibly executed, he said. ‘‘The breach has humiliated everyone.’’

The IRGC is evaluating its options for retaliation, with a direct strike on Tel Aviv being a primary consideration.

The assassination of Haniyeh has intensified fears about Israel’s reach and influence within Iran.

Ali Younisi, Iran’s former intelligence minister, expressed concerns in a 2020 interview, saying, ‘‘All the officials of the Islamic Republic should be worried about their lives. If the Zionist regime has not yet targeted the political authorities of the Islamic Republic, it is because it has not chosen to do so.’’

During his election campaign, Pezeshkian had distanced himself from previous provocative policies of the Islamic Republic and promised to restore Iran’s position on the global stage via dialogue.

A close aide to Pezeshkian suggested that the security lapse may have been an intentional bid by the IRGC to harm the new president’s reputation.

‘‘No unharmed brain can accept that this happened by accident, especially on Mr Pezeshkian’s first day in office,’’ he said. ‘‘He may have to go to war with Israel in his first few days in office, and it’s all because of the IRGC.’’

However, Pezeshkian’s son Yousef announced on Friday night that the nation’s priority ‘‘is not a war with Israel’’.