Julian Spencer-Churchill and Alexandru Filip
The media narrative around the method of the July 31, 2024 assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, depends largely on how interest groups are trying to frame the vulnerability of their adversaries. Israel is focused on demonstrating full-spectrum capability, while Tehran’s current administration is using the incident to bolster domestic policing against internal enemies and collaborators. However, of the three principal accounts, including the pre-planted explosive device, the locally launched missile, and an Israeli stealth aircraft delivered precision light munition, the latter appears to be the most consistent with the evidence of the damage inflicted.
Israeli deterrence is highly escalatory and disproportionate because it seeks to counter-act its adversaries’ foreign policies that are modelled after institutions designed for suppression of their domestic populations, which is often how the Jewish presence in the Near East is viewed by its enemies in the region. For example, Syria, Iraq and Iran have generally pursued anti-Zionist policies whose aggressiveness and rhetoric mimics the suppression of their own populations, as in Syria’s use of chemical weapons during its civil war, Iraq’s attack on the Kurds in the Anfal campaign, and Iran’s suppression of the Baloch and Azeri communities. In contrast, with the exception of Palestine and Jordan, the frontline Arab states do not face an existential threat from Israel, and therefore harness nationalist public sentiments as part of a diversionary foreign policy. This obviates and delays the political need to reform their rentier and hybrid authoritarian regimes. It also means that while anti-Israeli leaders can safely blame Western powers for arming Tel Aviv, their principal focus is to use threats from Israel to consolidate domestic control. In the specific case of Iran, support for Hamas and Hezbollah are a combination of religiously ideological compulsions, and instruments leveraged against moderate Arab states, as there is nothing inherently anti-Zionist about mainstream Iranian nationalism.
At two am, on July 31, 2024, Ismael Haniyeh, the chairman of the Political Bureau of Hamas and envoy to Iran, was killed, along with a bodyguard, by an explosion at his guesthouse, in Tehran. The first explanation, reported on by the New York Times, is that the explosive was a bomb that was planted two months prior. There are several issues with this explanation, the first being the considerable amount of time for an explosive device not to be found out by Iranian intelligence services, particularly through sniffer dogs and detection of electronic transmissions necessary for remote setting and detonation. This explanation is also lacking in significant details, such as the type of explosive, where it was planted, and how it was detonated. It also claims that the detonation “…appeared to do minimal damage beyond the building itself, as a missile probably would have done,” yet the observed damage is remarkably similar to the effects of the Israeli use of the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs against targets in Gaza.
Further, while it is understandable that the New York Times would not reveal their unnamed and alleged Middle Eastern sources (two Iranians and one American), the compounding absence of even speculative corroborating commentary among US, Israeli, Iranian, or Hamas experts, suggests there is little evidence for this scenario. Similarly, it was another New York Times article that made the sensationalist claim that Israel used an “AI-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine” to assassinate Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, Iran’s top nuclear physicist, which caused almost immediate skepticism among intelligence and security pundits. This explanation of the Fakhrizadeh assassination was actually identical to the official press release account of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). In fact, one of the authors of both pieces, Farnaz Fassihi, has been the subject of an official complaint by the National Union for Democracy in Iran, for her inaccurate reporting on the popular reaction in Iran after the January 3, 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, and her reporting of how Flight PS752 was shot down. She has further been accused of Pro-Iranian government bias in her reporting, and been the subject of criticism due to her ignorance of anti-regime activists and her downplaying of human rights issues in Iran, in favor of regime talking points.
The second explanation for the Haniyeh assassination is the account officially backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which stated that a “seven kg projectile” was fired from a mountainous area facing the residence from the North and West. This theory is particularly revealing of the measures used by the Iranian regime in its attempt to exercise control of the narrative. To that end, the IRGC has marshalled a number of witnesses that point to the widely held view that an aerial projectile was used. Evidence that this scenario is actually what some of the IRGC leadership believes, is supported by the almost immediate securing of the video footage from cameras at the Tochal Station one ski resort facing Haniyeh’s compound, and the detention and interrogation of staff and the public there until one pm the next day.
The issue however is that a shoulder-launched rocket could not have caused the observed damage of collapsing two sides of the wall and affecting the interior, to the extent that it did. The effects of an RPG-7 warhead on a concrete or brick wall, are well known. A locally procured 120mm mortar system would have been too inaccurate, and, along with a guided anti-tank missile, would have required a set-up and crew that would have been easily noticed. However, in every scenario, there would have been the need for active, local, and continuous surveillance by a team to coordinate the attack, given the shortcoming of using drones to track over a complex urban landscape.
A possibility is that there are witnesses who reported an aerial projectile impacting the building, and in order to control the narrative, Iranian officials sympathetic to the IRGC have steered the account towards the claim of a seven kg projectile fired locally. Paradoxically, both Israeli hawks and Iranian hardliners are incentivized to demonstrate the weakness of Iran’s security apparatus. For the Israelis it satisfies a statecraft dependent on a robust deterrence of disproportionate retaliation. For Tehran’s hybrid regime, it legitimizes a state security and surveillance architecture that is primarily designed to delay the trend of liberalization of its mainstream population.
Instead, we propose a detailed explanation for a third scenario of a strike conducted by an F-35 stealth aircraft. The F-35 certainly has the range capability, with estimates of more than 1,200 nautical miles with a full internal ordnance load. There is evidence that Israel has made further range-enhancing modifications to the F-35, as it had with the F-15I and F-16I. The straight line distance between Nevatim Air Base, which houses the Israeli Air Force’s F-35s, and Tehran, is approximately 860 nautical miles, without accounting for the flight path necessary to evade early warning detection sites and SAM battery locations. Thus, an F-35 on a strike mission to Tehran (flying very high), which had a refueling operation conducted in the airspace above Jordan, would be able to cut at least 100 nautical miles from its round trip.
Regarding the possibility of an air-to-air refueled mission, flight tracking data shows an Israeli Air Force (IAF) Air-to-Air Refueling tanker: Boeing 707-3W6C, with the registration code 290, taking a coincidental route which would have allowed it to refuel an F-35 en route to Iran. Both AirNav Radarbox and FlightRadar24 have blocked the aircraft with this registration code from being identified on their platforms. However, according to two open-source aircraft monitoring websites (ADS-B Exchange and ADS-B.NL), on the night of July 30th, and into the leading hours of July 31st, this exact tanker was present and flying through Jordanian airspace.
ADS-B Exchange corroborates the flight path information of ADS-B.NL, but with less detail. This particular flight bearing hex code 738A45, reflects the same flight path in the last leg of its journey towards Muwaffaq Air Base in Jordan. However, there is significant disruption of the flight data before the crossing into Jordan, possibly indicating the effects of GPS jamming and spoofing, which is fairly common in the Middle East. The aircraft’s last reported coordinates indicate an altitude of 11,525 feet and a decent rate of -2832 feet per minute, which would be significantly steep, and consistent with evading long-range surveillance radar after a high-altitude refueling mission.
Figures from ADS-B.NL reveals a clearer tracking of flight altitude detail, as it posts more vector data. Between July 30th at 20:56:01, and July 31st at 00:20:39, there are 68 data points which show the aircraft’s altitude, speed, track, triangulated positions, and mapping of those points. A caveat to make is that sensor interference can cause an altitude significantly lower than normal, and airspeeds which are not realistically feasible, but nevertheless allow valuable vector inference. While the first leg of the journey seems to suffer from the effects of spoofing or jamming, it would still indicate that this aircraft was in the air and operational at those given times. The specifically observed distortions are similar to what we observe in the effect of disruptions in the ADS-B Exchange. The last leg directed towards Muwaffaq Air Base is supported by the detail of consecutively linked data on altitude, speed, and track. Also noteworthy is the fact that the aircraft’s last known position on July 31st in the Jordanian desert, on and near the airbase, was experiencing lower levels of GPS interference compared to air space closer to Israel.
On this second track, which illustrates the aircraft’s location more accurately, we see the first positional recording of the aircraft established at 20,275 feet, due north from Nevatim Air Base (where Israeli tanker assets are housed). Due to the fact that at this point the aircraft is at 20,275 feet and only 13 miles from the Air Base, it is unlikely to have just taken off. The Boeing 707-3W6C typically climbs at a rate of around 290 knots and 1500 feet per minute, at an angle of around 15 degrees. Consequently, this aircraft was likely already airborne for several hours, which matches up with the particularities of the times which indicate the aircraft being in the air from 20:56”01 on July 30th.
Of particular note, is the final point where this aircraft is identified, showing an altitude decrease from 18,925 feet at 00:14:45, to 10,450 feet at 00:20:02, on July 31st. This would indicate the aircraft descending at 1,605 feet per minute, which is in agreement with the usual descent rate of an aircraft of this size. The 707 then disappears off the map, but it is important to note that the rate of descent, as well as its last-known position, puts it at around four nautical miles from Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, indicating an approach and landing there. Muwaffaq has been a heavily trafficked airbase for the US military (likely a successor of the 407th Air Expeditionary Group) in the Middle East for the past decade, and as recently as 2022 saw an additional investment of $265 million for its expansion. That Tel Aviv cooperates with the Jordanian air force, likely with US coordination, is demonstrated by Amman’s help in intercepting Iranian missiles fired at Israel on April 13, 2024.
Full spectrum and intense jamming can seriously degrade the accuracy of ADS-B data, which is infrequently practiced in the Middle East because of the hazard to civil aviation. The US Department of Defense has expressed concerns that open-source flight tracking data poses a threat to its military aircraft and operations. However, even with the disabling of ADS-B data through jamming, there remains an ability to track aircraft through Multilateration (MLAT), which essentially triangulates the aircrafts positions through a series of Secondary Surveillance Radar receivers based of the Mode-S transmission from the craft. The presence of MLAT receivers in the region (the Judean mountains of Israel and highlands of Jordan), which act as feeders to flight tracking companies such as FlightAware, and ADS-B Exchange, validates the accuracy of the last leg of refueling tanker, especially over the flatter east of Jordan.
The air defense conditions an IAF F-35 would be faced with in Iran, with the objective of a deep strike operation, are not dissimilar to what Israel has already confronted and neutralized in operations against Syria. The Israeli Air Force has bombed Syria multiple times from within their own airspace, even as recently on April 1st, 2024, when they used an F-35 to target the Iranian consulate in the middle of Damascus. They have also conducted suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) operations in Syria to great success: in 2018, Operation House of Cards destroyed multiple air defense systems and in particular an S-200, the same system Iran fields for extended range air defense. Israel has also previously destroyed Iranian S-300 air defense radar at Isfahan.
Iranian media reported that the explosion that killed Haniyah occurred at around 2am. Considering the time the Israeli Air Force tanker was airborne over Jordan, an F-35 fighter jet cruising towards Iran at Mach 0.86 would have reached Tehran in two and a half hours, lining up with the timeline of the strike. The most likely ordnance used, consistent with the damage at the residence, is the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB), with which Israel has extensive experience, and which has a one meter CEP (Circular Error Probability). The May 10, 2023, Israeli strike used to kill Ali Ghali in Khan Younis, the commander of Islamic Jihad’s rocket forces, is consistent with the blast effects of a GBU-39, as well as the observed damage in Tehran. The destruction of the outer wall and the relatively undamaged floor may be the result of a near flat trajectory impact. The strikes throughout Gaza have shown similar damage, destroying outer walls, but leaving the floors intact, as well as preserving the structural integrity of the building, while minimizing the prospects of survivability for the buildings’ occupiers on that story. As we seen on the images showing the damage at Haniyeh’s compound in Tehran, the outer wall is effectively destroyed.
Tehran does not seem politically concerned with having to improve its air defense surveillance and interception of Israeli aircraft, because it relies primarily on deterrence through the threat of missile strikes on Israel, which are both financially and diplomatically costly for Washington. The Houthi attacks on shipping have demonstrated the complexity of forcing a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz should Iran retaliate against a US attack through that expedient. Consequently, the IRGC is far more disposed to investing its energies into pursuing domestic opponents, which pose a far greater threat to the long term survival of the regime. Rather than searching for a sophisticated strategy behind Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, it is far more likely that politics of domestic and international insecurity in Tel Aviv are driving a broad front attack on all Hamas leadership. Israeli silence on claiming responsibility for the attack was likely a US condition for the use of Jordan’s Muwaffaq air base.
Dr Julian Spencer-Churchill is associate professor of international relations at Concordia University, and author of Militarization and War (2007) and of Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Egypt, and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer, 3 Field Engineer Regiment, from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11.
Alexandru Filip is an International Relations student at Concordia University, Montreal, and an analyst and editor at the Canadian Center for Strategic Studies research institute. His research focus is strategic and security studies, with a particular interest in naval, air and nuclear capabilities.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
