On Wednesday, July 31, 2024, at 2 a.m., the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran, just a day after Fuad Shukr, the most powerful military commander of Hezbollah, was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon.
Shukr was wanted by the U.S. for 41 years, with a $5 million ‘Rewards for Justice’ bounty for any information about him due to his central role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. military personnel and wounded 128 others. Haniyeh also directed and celebrated the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the killing of 1,200 people and over 300 days of hostage-taking of hundreds, including Americans, by Hamas.
Adding to the shock, Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper, citing an unnamed source in Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported that a high-level American security delegation, brokered by Oman, secretly traveled to Tehran.
Their mission was to deliver a ‘calming and cautionary’ message to deescalate the situation and ensure the supreme leader of Iran understood that the Biden-Harris administration was ‘kept in the dark’ by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the killing of two major terrorist leaders last week.
The detailed report stated that the American delegation, arriving on a private plane from Turkey, landed at Payam-e-Khorram Airport in Karaj on Thursday and held a two-hour meeting with Iranian officials before returning to Ankara.
According to the same report, ‘the delegation presented a list containing the names of ten Mossad agents inside Iran, whom the Americans believe were involved in the assassination, directly or indirectly. This was intended as a good faith initiative in response to the Israeli state’s stunning strike, which was carried out without coordination with Washington.’ It could be one of the most valuable souvenirs given to the Iranian mullahs lately.
Although the U.S. State Department rejected the report on Sunday, later in the week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that to deescalate the conflict, the Biden administration had ‘engaged in intense diplomacy with allies and partners, communicating that message directly to Iran,’ which largely confirms the Kuwaiti newspaper’s report.
Additionally, immediately after the reported visit by the U.S. delegation, ‘more than two dozen people, including senior intelligence officers, military officials, and staff workers at a military-run guesthouse in Tehran,’ were arrested in response to the assassination of the Hamas leader, according to the New York Times based on reports from two Iranians familiar with the investigation.
Iran delayed its retaliation attacks on Israel, a move for which some in the Biden administration claimed credit. However, on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, two major events clearly demonstrated that the supreme leader of Iran did not respect the Biden administration’s pleas for deescalation and did not appreciate the American overtures. On that day, Iran-backed militias in Iraq attacked an American Army base, injuring five U.S. troops and two contractors.
Simultaneously, a high-ranking Russian delegation, led by Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a senior ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, visited Iran. The delegation included Russia’s defense ministers and several Russian army generals, who met with Tehran’s top leaders.
They delivered Putin’s direct message to his minion the Comrade Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordering him not to act recklessly by attacking Israel with outdated missiles as they did on April 13, an act that resulted in humiliation. Putin promised to soon deliver advanced weapons, including air defenses, to Iran.
Additionally, the Islamic regime of Pakistan announced plans to provide Iran with advanced ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in case the supreme leader decides to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.
It is clear that it was not U.S. diplomacy that worked but rather Russian military and intelligence advice/orders that influenced Iran’s decisions.
We are on the brink of World War III. Russia and China’s Communist Party are setting their war chessboard. Iran’s regime is likely to attack Israel with a nuclear bomb soon unless Israel, with the help of America, destroys all nuclear and missile facilities of Iran, thereby giving the Iranian people an opportunity to overthrow the weakened regime of the mullahs.
