Iran’s outgoing intelligence minster, Esmail Khatib, must be eating his words. In late July, he boasted that “dismantling Mossad’s infiltration network” in Iran was the greatest achievement of his three-year tenure.
Six days later in the heart of Tehran, Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was under the protection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). What makes the assassination especially noteworthy is that the Iranian regime regards the IRGC’s own intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities as far more sophisticated than those of Khatib’s ministry. In fact, within the IRGC’s internal structures, the security-intelligence axis embedded within the all-powerful IRGC Intelligence Organization is the most powerful and influential force not only within the IRGC, but also more broadly in Iran—the crème de la crème of the regime’s security apparatus.
Let there be no mistake: The assassination of Haniyeh in an IRGC guesthouse in Tehran was a colossal intelligence failure. It has exposed major vulnerabilities within the IRGC’s intelligence apparatus, including likely foreign infiltration at the highest levels.
This is the biggest takeaway from the killing of Haniyeh—not his death, per se. Beyond the immediate question of Iran’s direct response to Israel, the regime’s paranoia at home will likely increase as it tries to root out foreign infiltration and tighten its grip on the security services as its supreme leader, the 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prepares for his succession, a crucial and potentially destabilizing event for the regime.
Of course, this is not the IRGC’s first intelligence failure. In April, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the IRGC Quds Force’s commander for the Levant—responsible for coordinating Hezbollah attacks—was killed in a targeted strike in Syria at a secretive Quds Force annex next to the Iranian Embassy. There was also the targeted killing in November 2020 of IRGC scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, who was also under IRGC protection.
The big difference this time, however, is that the intelligence failure took place while Haniyeh was in an IRGC compound in the heart of Tehran, where he had traveled from Qatar to attend the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
High-value terrorist leaders have always considered Iran to be one of the very few safe havens for them to travel, reside, and operate. These include Imad Mughniyeh—Hezbollah’s chief of operations, assassinated in Syria in 2008—whose daughter wrote in her Farsi memoirs that her father only felt safe on Iranian territory. Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel currently resides in Iran. Even leaders of European organized crime syndicates such as the Ireland-based Kinahan transnational criminal group have reportedly found refuge there.
The IRGC’s habit of guaranteeing sanctuary to terrorist figures has enabled it to easily cultivate and co-opt some of the deadliest militant organizations in the world, whose members often enjoy lavish lifestyles while they use Iran for training and plotting terror attacks. According to intelligence reports described by the Wall Street Journal, some of the Hamas militants who breached the Israel-Gaza border and conducted the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre were trained by the IRGC in Iran.
Israel’s ability to kill Haniyeh in an IRGC-protected compound at a time when the IRGC Intelligence Organization would have been on high alert will alter the perceived dynamic of Iran as a safe haven. The assassination will make terrorist leaders think twice before seeking refuge there and likely complicate the relationship between the Iranian regime and its proxies.
This is a significant setback for the regime. Whereas the intelligence leaks that led to the assassinations of Zahedi or Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani in Iraq in 2020 could be blamed on foreign moles, the responsibility in this case lies squarely with the IRGC. The IRGC’s fear of losing face can be seen in the organization’s quick denials of Western media reports that explosives had been smuggled into the IRGC guesthouse where Haniyeh was staying. To deflect blame from the IRGC, officials instead blamed a projectile fired from nearby. These attempts to dodge responsibility, however, did not prevent Iranian authorities from arresting more than two dozen individuals linked to the guesthouse and overhauling security protocols.
This strike in the heart of Tehran will only increase the anxieties of an already-paranoid Khamenei and IRGC about Israeli infiltration at the highest levels of security in the IRGC Intelligence Organization.
Over the past few years, Khamenei has sought to mitigate foreign infiltration by purging the IRGC’s senior ranks following successive domestic intelligence failures. In 2009, for example, after the Green Movement threatened the stability of the regime following the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei restructured the IRGC’s Basij militia and intelligence apparatuses.
A significant ouster also took place in June 2022, when hard-line cleric Hossein Taeb—one of the regime’s most powerful figures—was removed as the head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization. Taeb’s replacement—Brig. Gen. Mohammad Kazemi, the former head of the IRGC Counterintelligence Organization, which is tasked with identifying moles in the regime—exposed the ayatollah’s paranoid state of mind in relation to foreign infiltration. Replacing a cleric with a seasoned intelligence commander was also intended to improve the operational efficacy of the IRGC’s operations abroad.
But if Kazemi was brought in to make up for the successive intelligence failures that had led to key regime figures and nuclear sites being targeted and IRGC attacks against Israelis being consistently foiled, Haniyeh’s death showed that it was to no avail.
The man who succeeded Kazemi as the IRGC Counterintelligence Organization commander, Majid Khademi, will also come under new scrutiny: His agency is tasked with rooting out spies within the IRGC, and it clearly failed. Also at issue is the future of the IRGC’s Ansar al-Mahdi Protection Unit, which guards high-level Iranian and visiting officials. This unit has suffered from turnover in recent years amid suspicion of infiltration by foreign intelligence organizations. For example, its commander Ali Nasiri was removed in 2019 amid suspicions about his loyalties. Nasiri reappeared in the Counterintelligence Organization and was reportedly arrested there later. His successor, Brig. Gen. Fathollah Jomeiri, has overseen a series of spectacular failures, including the assassinations of Fakhrizadeh and Haniyeh. In all likelihood, officers of the Ansar al-Mahdi Protection Unit were guarding both.
Now that these vulnerabilities have been exposed, the IRGC will be all the more determined to save face and make up for its failings. There are numerous short-, medium-, and long-term options for its leadership to respond.
In Tehran, Khamenei’s appetite for doubling down on purging the regime’s security-intelligence apparatus will increase following Haniyeh’s death. The foreign infiltration that enabled the assassination of such a well-protected, high-value target has taken place against the backdrop of preparations for the supreme leader’s succession. Over the past five years, Khamenei has put most his remaining energy into ensuring a smooth and orderly succession process. His passing will inevitably be a potentially destabilizing moment for the regime, and he will want to ensure that the IRGC has full control over the security situation prior to his demise.
The sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was one of the two front-runners to succeed Khamenei, was a major setback for the ayatollah’s succession plans. At a time when the security-intelligence apparatus of the regime has clearly been compromised, guaranteeing the security of the other candidate—Khamenei’s power-hungry son, Mojtaba—will be at the front of the aging ayatollah’s mind. The complete unraveling of Khamenei’s succession plans—and a major danger to the survival of the regime—is now only one assassination away. After the Israeli operation in Tehran last week, another wave of internal purges is all but guaranteed.
The Iranian regime’s response to Israel could take several forms. While much of the global commentary is framing Iran’s response to Israel in terms of the usual tit for tat, Khamenei and the IRGC will be driven by different concerns. For the latter, the response will be driven by the intent to uproot foreign infiltration and inflict enough damage to the Israelis to stop them operating against the regime on Iranian soil.
Until now, the main discussion on how this would be achieved has been centered on the likelihood of a conventional military response, similar to the Iranian drone and missile barrage against Israel in April.
In tandem with this type of conventional attack, a global campaign of terror against Israelis and Jews should not be ruled out. After various IRGC plots to kill Israelis were foiled in recent years, Kazemi will be all the more motivated to make up for these failures. The IRGC may calculate that while it may be unable to meaningfully shift Israel’s calculus through conventional means—due to the Israeli military’s military superiority, especially in air defense—a campaign of terror against unarmed Israelis and Jewish people abroad could put enough pressure on the Israeli government to avoid striking inside Iran.
Another option is for the IRGC to significantly ramp up its nuclear escalation, which is already near breakout levels. Increasing enrichment to 90 percent, even if only by a symbolic amount, is something that the regime could consider as a way to show Israel that the Haniyeh assassination crossed a red line. Given the lack of any serious response to Iran’s nuclear activities for years, Iranian decision-makers may calculate that they would not face much backlash on the world stage.
However, Tehran’s main concern will be with its own intelligence and security failures. These could have significant long-term implications for the Iranian regime’s military and security services—with purges and paranoia lasting long after the promised riposte to Israel.
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