Israel has acknowledged the assassination of a former Hamas leader in a warning to the head of the Houthis

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that Israel assassinated former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran in July, and warned that the leader of the Iranian-backed Houthi armed forces in Yemen would also be "beheaded" by the Israeli military, further increasing tensions between Iran and Israel in the region.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported that the Houthis have launched several missile attacks on Israel in recent days, and Katz said at an event on Monday (December 23) : "We will strike hard against the Houthis... And behead their leaders, just as we have done with Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah in Tehran, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, we will do the same in Hodeidah and Sana 'a."

Katz said that Israel has defeated Hamas, Hezbollah, destroyed Iran's defense and missile production systems, and will also deal a severe blow to the Houthis.

This is the first time that Israel has publicly acknowledged that Haniyeh was assassinated.

Haniyeh was killed in an attack in Tehran on July 31, an assassination that Israel has never acknowledged. On September 27, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. On 17 October, the IDF and the General Security Service (GSS) issued a joint statement saying that Haniyeh's successor, Ismail Sinwar, had been killed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip on 16 October.