Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, led the prayers at assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's funeral in Tehran, on August 1, 2024, a rare honour for someone who is not Iranian.
On Wednesday, July 31, 2024, Ayatollah Khamenei ordered an Iranian attack on Israel at a meeting of Iran's supreme leadership council convened after he was woken up in the middle of the night to be informed about Haniyeh's assassination.
The killing is a major embarrassment to Iran since Haniyeh was in Tehran as a State guest to attend the inauguration of Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
What was even more embarrassing is that the Hamas leader was killed in a guesthouse located in an Iranian Revolutionary Guards compound and that a bomb had been placed in the room where he usually stayed days or weeks earlier, according to the New York Times.
Israel has not claimed credit for the assassination -- Jerusalem usually stays mum about its campaigns of murder and disruption in the Islamic republic.
Haniyeh will be buried in Doha, Qatar, on Friday.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Mahipal Soni/Rediff.com
