Mumbai: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has offered a chilling, almost cinematic account of how he brushed past one of the Middle East’s most audacious assassinations— hours before it happened. Speaking at a book launch “My Idea of Nation First: Redefining Unalloyed Nationalism” by Uday Mahurkar on Wednesday in New Delhi, Gadkari revealed that he had crossed paths with Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, shortly before Haniyeh was killed inside what was supposed to be one of Iran’s most secure military facilities.
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Gadkari said his presence in Iran was at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who asked him to represent India at the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian. The trip, intended to be a routine diplomatic engagement, took a dramatic turn even before the formalities began. On the eve of the ceremony, Gadkari recalled being at a five-star hotel in Tehran where world leaders and senior dignitaries had gathered informally over tea and coffee.
Amid presidents, prime ministers and ministers, one figure stood out—not because he led a nation, but because he led a cause. That man was Haniyeh. “All the heads of various nations were there,” Gadkari said, “but one person who wasn’t a head of state was Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.” Gadkari said he saw Haniyeh moving in the same convoy, heading to the swearing-in ceremony alongside Iran’s President and Chief Justice. At the time, nothing seemed amiss. Hours later, the atmosphere changed abruptly. Gadkari said that around 4 am, the Iranian ambassador to India knocked on his door with an urgent message: they had to leave immediately.
When Gadkari asked why, the answer stunned him. Haniyeh had been assassinated. “I was shocked,” Gadkari told the audience. “I asked how it happened, and he said, ‘I don’t know yet.’” Iranian authorities later confirmed that the assassination took place around 1:15 am on July 31. Haniyeh was staying at a heavily guarded guest facility inside a military complex under the supervision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His bodyguard was also killed in the attack. Despite the layers of security, the operation was executed with lethal precision. Even now, Gadkari said, the exact method remains disputed.
“Some people say he was killed because of using his mobile phone. Some say it happened in some other way,” he noted, underlining the fog that still surrounds the killing. Iran’s official line was that a short-range missile struck the building where Haniyeh was staying. But another, far more explosive theory soon surfaced—the Mossad angle. According to a report by The Telegraph, Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, allegedly recruited Iranian security operatives to plant explosives inside the IRGC guesthouse in northern Tehran.
The original plan, the report said, was to kill Haniyeh during his visit for former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral in May, but that attempt was shelved due to massive crowds. The revised operation was colder and cleaner. Explosives were allegedly planted in multiple rooms, with surveillance footage reportedly showing the operatives moving in and out within minutes. The devices were detonated remotely around 2 am, killing Haniyeh. Iranian officials later admitted it was a catastrophic intelligence failure, with suspicions that insiders from an elite protection unit may have been compromised.
For Gadkari, the episode carried a blunt geopolitical lesson. If a country is truly strong, he said, no one dares lay a hand on it—pointing to Israel as a small but formidable state that has leveraged technology and military might to project power far beyond its size. What began as tea with dignitaries ended as a brush with history—and a stark reminder of how, in West Asian geopolitics, the line between diplomacy and death can be terrifyingly thin.
