Israel's intelligence community faced scrutiny after the October 7 attacks, but just pulled off a string of victories against its enemies.
Israeli Army/Handout via REUTERS
Israel claimed responsibility earlier this week for a deadly strike that killed a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, and just hours later, it became the leading suspect in a sophisticated scheme that assassinated Hamas' political chief in Iran.
The stunning, back-to-back killings mark two significant intelligence successes for Israel, and demonstrate its ability to secretly track its enemies and strike them with cold precision, Middle East security and counterterrorism experts told Business Insider.
But the strategic repercussions of these strikes remain to be seen, as the dual assassinations have also sparked fears of large-scale retaliation from Iran and its proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, which could kill more Israelis and plunge the region into even more conflict.
On Tuesday, Israeli fighter jets carried out a strike in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, killing Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.
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Shukr served on Hezbollah's Jihad Council, its highest military body, and was a senior advisor to the group's secretary-general, Hasan Nasrallah. The US government also held him responsible for the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and had placed a $5 million bounty on his head.
The Israel Defense Forces blamed Shukr for a deadly rocket attack in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that took place just days prior and said it killed him in retaliation.
Jonathan Lord, formerly a political military analyst at the Pentagon, said the operation to kill Shukr was likely informed by combat intelligence. Israel found where he was at a specific time and took the shot when it had the opportunity.
"Their ability to track these individuals in fairly real time, find out where they are, where they're going to be, and then to be able to launch a surgical strike against them — it's an impressive capability," said Lord, the director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security think tank.
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Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Beirut strike demonstrated precision targeting that left minimal collateral damage; three other people were reportedly killed, including two children.
Hours following the Beirut strike, a more seismic incident occurred: Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas' political wing, was killed in Iran shortly after he attended the swearing-in of its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The circumstances surrounding Haniyeh's death were initially unclear, and it was first thought that he died from an airstrike. However, The New York Times reported on Thursday that he was killed by an explosive device that had been smuggled months ago into the guesthouse where he was staying in Tehran and remotely detonated once it was clear Haniyeh was in the room.
Iran and Hamas blamed Israel for Haniyeh's assassination and promised revenge.
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Israel has not publicly acknowledged its involvement, but Israeli officials — including the leader of the country's vaunted Mossad intelligence agency — have vowed to hunt down Hamas leaders responsible for the October 7 massacre wherever they are.
The Mossad has a long history of carrying out Israeli assassination operations outside the country. Axios later reported that it was Mossad agents who planted the explosive device in the Tehran guesthouse, which is run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and detonated it from Iranian soil.
"Astonishingly, Israel had the assets and the capability to gain access to what should have been one of the most highly defended and secured targets in Iran," Hoffman said.
Adding to the significant announcements this week, Israel on Thursday said it killed Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas' military wing, in a mid-July strike in Gaza. Hamas did not immediately confirm his death in the strike, which reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians.
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Yoav Gallant, Israel's defense minister, said Thursday that "the operation was conducted precisely and professionally" by the IDF and Israeli security forces.
Lord, the former Pentagon analyst, said tactical intelligence is "definitely a strong suit of the Israelis," but he stressed that this must be weighed against some of the apparent breakdowns that the country's elite intelligence community faced leading up to the October 7 attacks.
Israel's political, intelligence, and security apparatuses came under immense scrutiny following the deadly massacre as the public tried to make sense of how the worst breach of the country's defenses since the 1973 Yom Kippur War could occur.
Top officials missed and ignored several warnings that Hamas was preparing a major attack, believing such an event couldn't happen and failed to respond to signs of an imminent attack. In April, Israel's military intelligence chief resigned and said his directorate "did not live up to the task we were entrusted with."
Hoffman said Israel's recent string of targeted killings is its attempt to reestablish the dominant reputation of its intelligence community and restore its deterrent capability so it can make good on future threats and appear stronger in the face of regional adversaries like Iran.
"Israel understands that reputation is everything in the Middle East," Hoffman said. "So gaining that back with this particular series of assassinations was absolutely pivotal."
