AI-Powered Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader

Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an AI-controlled bomb that was hidden in a highly guarded building where he was known to stay in Iran.

A top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed on Wednesday by an AI-Powered bomb that was sneaked into the guesthouse in Tehran where he was living, according to seven Middle Eastern and an American official.

Five Middle Eastern sources said that the AI explosion device had been hidden in the guesthouse for about two months. The guesthouse is part of a big complex called Neshat in a nice area of northern Tehran. It is run and guarded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Mr. Haniyeh was in the capital of Iran to see the new president take office. The five officials said that the bomb went off from afar once it was proven that he was in his room.

Two Iranian officials from the Revolutionary Guards who were briefed on the event said that the explosion shook the building, broke some windows and caused part of an outside wall to fall. A picture of the building given to The New York Times also showed this kind of damage.

Security Breach and the Hidden Bomb

Middle Eastern sources say that Mr. Haniyeh stayed at the guesthouse more than once when he went to Tehran. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could talk about secret information about the murder.

Wednesday, officials from Iran and Hamas said that the killing was done by Israel. Several U.S. sources who asked to remain anonymous also agreed with this conclusion. The killing could have started a new round of violence in the Middle East and thrown off the talks that were going on to end the war in Gaza. A key figure in the cease-fire talks was Mr. Haniyeh.

Israel hasn’t said openly that it was responsible for the killing, but five Middle Eastern officials say that Israeli intelligence officials told the US and other Western governments about the operation right after it happened.

Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the US had not been told about the plan to kill the president in advance. As soon as the killing happened, people started to think that Israel might have killed Mr Haniyeh with a missile strike, possibly from a drone or an aeroplane, like they did in April when they fired a missile at a military base in Isfahan.

That missile idea made people wonder how Israel could have gotten past Iran’s air defences again to carry out such a brazen airstrike on the capital. It turned out that the killers were able to take advantage of a different type of weakness in Iran’s defences: a security hole in a compound that was meant to be well watched that let a bomb be hidden for weeks before it went off.

It was still not clear how the AI explosion device got into the guesthouse. Officials from the Middle East said that planning the murder took months and that the site had to be closely watched. When asked how or when the explosives were put in the room, the two Iranian agents who talked about the killing said they didn’t know.

The Aftermath and Impact

The killing was planned by Israel to happen outside of Qatar, where Mr. Haniyeh and other top Hamas leaders live. There has been a cease-fire in Gaza, and the Qatari government has been helping Israel and Hamas talk about it.

Photos and statements from Iranian officials showed that the early Wednesday blast broke windows and caused part of the complex wall to fall down. Like a rocket would have, it didn’t seem to do much damage to anything else besides the building itself.

According to officials in the Middle East, including those in Iran, the device went off around 2 a.m. local time. Officials say that shocked building staff ran to find out what was making the loud noise, which led them to the room where Mr Haniyeh was staying with a bodyguard.

The medical team ran to the room right after the explosion. The team said that Mr. Haniyeh had died right away. The bodyguard was also dead when the team tried to bring him back to life.