Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted publicly for the first time on Monday that Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July, further risking tensions between Tehran and Israel’s arch-enemy in a region rocked by Israel’s war in Gaza and conflict in Lebanon.

He said Israel had defeated Hamas and Hezbollah, “blinded” Iran’s defense systems and damaged its production systems. He also said the country had toppled the Assad regime in Syria, dealing a serious blow to what he called the “axis of evil”.

“We will also deal a heavy blow to the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, which remains the last one that can survive.”

Israel will “damage their strategic infrastructure and we will decapitate their leaders – just as we did to Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon – we will do it in Hodeida and Sana’a,” Katz said during the evening tribute. Ministry of Defense staff.

An Iran-backed group in Yemen has been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade of Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.

In late July, the political leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas was killed in Tehran in an assassination that Iranian authorities blamed on Israel. At the time, Israel did not directly claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s murder.

Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, was the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy as the war raged in Gaza, beginning with an attack the group led on Israel on October 7, 2023. He participated in indirect negotiations with international mediation to achieve a truce in the Palestinian enclave.

A few months later, Israeli forces in Gaza killed Yahya Sinwar, Haniyeh’s successor and mastermind of the October 7 attack.

Earlier this month, Syrian rebels toppled the Assad regime. Last week, Israeli forces entered a part of Syrian territory that is supposed to be a demilitarized zone, prompting accusations that the country is taking advantage of the chaos in the region to seize land.