(New York, N.Y.) — Today, Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Chief Executive Officer Ambassador Mark D. Wallace and CEP President Frances F. Townsend released the following statement regarding the death in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismayil Haniyeh:

The Iranian proxy and partner groups who orchestrated, supported, and celebrated the October 7 massacre in Israel have suffered heavy blows this week, as the network of Iranian-affiliated terror groups was cut down in multiple regional theaters. Israel’s strike against Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut on Monday, the U.S. strike against the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, and most significantly, today’s killing of Hamas Politburo Chief Ismail Haniyeh, are all justified actions to take against the world's most violent extremists, including the leader of a terror group that continues to inflict incalculable suffering with the support of powerful state actors.

Haniyeh met his end shortly after attending the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president Pezeshkian—effectively a gathering of the Iranian terrorist proxy network: from Hezbollahs’s Naim Qassim to Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ziyad al-Nakhalah and the Houthis’ Mohammad Abdul Salam.

The insidious nature of this state-sponsored terror network is exemplified by Ismail Haniyeh and his jet-setting lifestyle—a lifestyle of reckless violence, corruption, and decadence that has for too long gone unpunished and unanswered by Western fecklessness and willful apathy. He was responsible for Hamas’ global procurement and income network, and therefore in charge of relations with state sponsors Iran, Turkey, and Qatar—the latter two countries playing “ally” to the West all while providing financial and material support for Haniyeh’s unfettered violence in the Middle East.

Tehran, Ankara, and Doha may mourn Haniyeh’s death and the death of his fellow terrorists, but we should be clear: the region, and the wider world, are a safer place now that Ismail Haniyeh—who was filmed celebrating October 7 from his office in Doha—will no longer ply his regular flight from Doha to Tehran.