Hamas has praised Iran for attack on Israel to avenge three men – but who were they?
Hamas has praised Iran’s missile attack on Israel, saying it was a “heroic” attempt to avenge the deaths of three men.
Iran has confirmed it fired a barrage of missiles at Israel on Tuesday, saying it did so in “self-defence” – while Israel has said Iran made a “big mistake” by launching the attack.
Hamas, though, said: “We congratulate the heroic rocket launch carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, on large areas of our occupied territories, in response to the occupation’s continuing crimes against the peoples of the region, and in retaliation for the blood of our nation’s heroic martyrs”.
The group mentioned the deaths of three men it felt Iran’s attack was seeking to avenge.
Here we take a look at who those leaders are and why Israel may have targeted them.
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Hassan Nasrallah
Nasrallah was the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The 64-year-old was known for being a passionate and fiery orator and was considered by many to be the most powerful individual in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, which is aligned with Iran, has as many as 100,000 fighters and some members of the group are politicians in the Lebanese parliament.
Nasrallah joined Hezbollah in 1982 – the year it was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members who travelled to Lebanon to fight invading Israeli forces.
He rose through the group’s ranks before becoming leader in 1992.
Hezbollah confirmed the death of Nasrallah but vowed its fight with Israel would continue. Pic: PA
Under his leadership, Hezbollah was transformed from a mainly military force into a major political player in Lebanon with elected politicians.
Nasrallah’s Hezbollah is credited with leading the war of attrition that led to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon in 2000.
His status rose and was further cemented in 2006 when Hezbollah fought Israel to a stalemate during the 34-day war.
Nasrallah, who was viewed as an extremist by many Western leaders, cemented Hezbollah as an arch-enemy of Israel, seeking deeper alliances with Shia religious leaders in Iran and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas.
He was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on Friday.
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Ismail Haniyeh
As a prominent member of the movement that became Hamas in the late 1980s, Haniyeh was widely considered the group’s overall leader until his reported death in July 2024.
He was less hardline and militaristic than Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza and is leading the battle.
Within the Palestinian national movement, Haniyeh was a popular figure, even among those who were adamantly opposed to its ideology.
He was imprisoned in 1989 as part of the Israeli response to the first Palestinian uprising and then spent time in the “no man’s land” between Israel and Lebanon in 1992.
Once back in Gaza, in 1997 he was put in charge of the office of Ahmed Yassin – one of the Hamas founders and its spiritual leader – who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in 2004.
This increased his influence, and he was eventually elected Palestinian prime minister by its president and the leader of the rival group Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, when Hamas won the most seats in the 2006 elections.
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Ismail Haniyeh. Pic: AP
A year later, however, fighting broke out between Hamas and Fatah, ultimately ousting Fatah from Gaza and separating the Palestinian territories between the Hamas-controlled strip and the Palestinian Authority-run West Bank.
This made Haniyeh “de facto leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip” between 2007 and 2017 until he was succeeded by Sinwar.
Haniyeh then moved to Qatar to become head of the political bureau where he led ceasefire negotiations after the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hamas war following the 7 October attacks last year.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “assassinated” in the Iranian capital Tehran at around 2am local time on 31 July this year.
Abbas Nilforushan
Nilforushan was a prominent general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who served as the deputy commander for operations and overseeing ground forces.
The 58-year-old died in the same Israeli airstrike that killed Nasrallah in Beirut.
It’s not clear why he was in Lebanon at the time but a spokesman for Iran’s regime described him as a “guest to the people of Lebanon”.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Abbas Nilforushan. Pic: AP
The Guard’s Quds Force – the branch tasked with foreign operations – has armed and trained Hezbollah for years.
After his death, another Iranian commander described Nilfourshan as “courageous” and said he had been martyred as a result of Israel’s “heinous and terrorist actions”.
Nilforushan, like other members of the Guard that view Israel as Iran’s main enemy, long mocked and criticised the country.
The US Treasury sanctioned Nilforushan in 2022 and said he had led an organisation “directly in charge of protest suppression”.
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