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Iran said Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a “short-range projectile” that was fired into the official residence where he was staying in Tehran, and vowed to “punish” Israel.

The country’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that the assassination was “orchestrated and executed” by Israel and accused the “criminal” US of complicity in the strike by providing support for the Jewish state.

Haniyeh and his bodyguard died early on Wednesday morning, hours after he participated in the inauguration of Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. Haniyeh, who lived in exile in Qatar but travelled regularly to Tehran, also met Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the killing, and typically does not comment on its assassination attempts in the Islamic republic.

The attack on Haniyeh has stoked fears that the Middle East is at risk of sliding into a full-blown war.

It dealt a humiliating blow to the republic, which backs regional militants that have launched missiles and drones against Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.

The guards said an “appropriate” Iranian response to Haniyeh’s killing “will come at the time and place of our choosing”.

The day before Haniyeh’s death, Israel said it carried out an attack in Beirut that killed Fuad Shukr, the military commander of Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant movement. Hizbollah has also promised retaliation for that assassination.

The guards said the investigation into Haniyeh’s assassination revealed that a short-range projectile, with a warhead weighing about 7kg, was used. It said in Iran’s first official account of the attack that the projectile caused a powerful explosion “from outside the area where the guests’ residence was located”.

The republic was certain to “avenge the blood” of Haniyeh and deliver a “severe punishment” to the “adventurous and terrorist Zionist regime”, the statement said.

Khamenei had previously said “we consider it our duty to avenge the blood of a revered guest” killed “on the territory of the Islamic republic”.

The assassinations of Haniyeh and Shukr have increased the risk of a co-ordinated response from the so-called axis of resistance, which in addition to Hizbollah and Hamas includes the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.

Israel and Hizbollah have exchanged fire regularly since Hamas’s October 7 attack. But tensions rose sharply after a rocket strike killed 12 youngsters on a football pitch in the occupied Golan Heights last week, which Israel blamed on Hizbollah.

The US, which had pledged to defend Israel, has boosted its military presence by deploying warships and fighter jets to the Middle East in anticipation of an attack against its ally.

Haniyeh’s assassination on home territory is considered a security breach for Iran and has revived fears about enemy agents penetrating the country’s intelligence apparatus.

Hosseinali Haji Deligani, an Iranian lawmaker, said the possibility of “hired agents having played a role in Haniyeh’s assassination cannot be ruled out”.

The latest incident has raised the stakes in the stand-off between the Islamic republic and Israel. In April, after a decades-long shadow war, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones against Israel, in a widely telegraphed attack in response to a deadly Israeli strike on its consulate building in Syria. Israel responded with a raid on a military base near the Iranian city of Isfahan, but tensions had eased since then.

Ismail Kosari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, insisted Tehran would respond more forcefully this time.

“Exacting revenge is a question of [defending] our honour and territory,” he said on Saturday. “Avenging Haniyeh’s blood will entail a heavier response.”

NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the games head to our latest updates.

PARIS — In 2021, when the gymnast Simone Biles first began to publicly perform the vault that now bears her name — the Biles II — her ability to land the incredibly difficult routine awed the world of gymnastics.

But soon after, Biles was robbed of her chance to perform it at the Tokyo Olympics when she was beset by a sudden and unexplainable loss of her ability to control her body through the air known as the “twisties.” The affliction forced her to withdraw from most of her events that summer, including the vault final.

On Saturday, the dream deferred finally became reality. In the Olympic vault final, the Biles II helped to win its namesake her third gold medal (and counting) of the Summer Games in Paris.

The routine was one of two vaults Biles performed in the event, in which final scores are calculated by taking the average of two different routines. The Biles II, the higher-scoring of the two, looked like this: Biles sprinted down the runway, then cartwheeled into a backward handspring onto the vaulting table, an approach called a Yurchenko. Then, she pushed off so high into the air that she was able to complete two full flips as she held out her flexed legs in a pike position.

The momentum she generates is so great that she rarely sticks the landing, more often taking a step or two as she did Saturday.

The vault, also known as the Yurchenko double pike, was officially named after Biles when she became the first gymnast to land it at an international competition in 2023.

In gymnastics, a final score is based both on the difficulty of the gymnast’s attempted routine and the quality of her execution. The difficulty of Biles’s vault is currently the highest in the women’s sport, worth 6.4 points — which helps to offset the fractions of a point lost due to an extra step.

Simone Biles after finishing her vaults during the the Olympic gymnastics women’s vault final on Saturday.

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On Saturday, her Biles II vault earned a 15.7 after a tenth of a point was deducted when she stepped one foot slightly out of bounds. Her second vault earned a score of 14.9, giving her a final score of 15.3 — a third of a point more than her closest competitor, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

Andrade, widely considered the world’s second-best gymnast, had won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after Biles withdrew from the event, then bested Biles in vault at last year’s World Championships. Saturday’s silver medal is Andrade’s third medal of these Olympics, after she won silver in the individual all-around event and helped lead Brazil to a team bronze earlier in the week.

“I’ve never had an athlete that close, so it definitely put me on my toes,” Biles said Thursday. “It brought out the best athlete in myself, so I’m excited and proud to compete with her.”

Another American gymnast, Jade Carey, won the bronze medal with a final score of 14.466.

Biles has two events remaining in Paris, the balance beam and floor exercise finals. They represent an opportunity to match her historic medal total from the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, in which she won four golds and a bronze as a 19-year-old.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Vietnam’s ruling Communist party has appointed President To Lam as its general secretary, the country’s most powerful position, to succeed longtime chief Nguyen Phu Trong, who died two weeks ago.

Lam, a former public security minister, was elected unanimously by the party’s central committee on Saturday, a government newspaper reported. He ascended to the role of president just two months ago. It remains unclear whether he will hold both positions.

Lam’s appointment comes at a crucial time for Vietnam, which has become a regional manufacturing powerhouse as companies rush to diversify from China amid escalating geopolitical tensions.

However, concerns about Vietnam’s ability to attract more investment have grown in recent months as a sweeping corruption crackdown — which Lam oversaw as minister — has triggered bureaucratic paralysis and rare political instability in the one-party state.  

Following his appointment, Lam told party’s delegates that he would continue to pursue the fight against corruption “without any exceptions”, state media reported. The crackdown has achieved positive results, he said. 

Lam, 67, also vowed to maintain Vietnam’s foreign policy, saying he would “inherit and promote” the legacy of Trong, who held Vietnam’s top position for 13 years until his death in July.

Trong was the architect of the anti-corruption crackdown, and shaped Vietnam’s independent foreign policy, which deftly balanced Hanoi’s ties with major powers.

The appointment caps a meteoric rise for Lam, a former police officer. He became president in late May following his predecessor’s resignation due to unspecified “violations and shortcomings” amid corruption investigations.

The crackdown has seen a dramatic reshuffle of the country’s top ranks and the arrests of hundreds of government officials. Two presidents have resigned since January 2023, and a real estate tycoon was sentenced to death for her role in a $12bn fraud. Critics say the corruption crackdown has also ensnared government critics and political rivals. 

Lam was seen as Trong’s right-hand man in implementing the graft crackdown, but he has also been criticised for lavish spending. In 2021, a video was posted of him eating a gold leaf-covered steak at an upscale London restaurant run by the celebrity chef Nusret Gökçe, popularly known as Salt Bae. The video prompted controversy in Vietnam and was eventually taken down by the chef.

Lam’s ministry has also been leading the charge on arrests of government critics and rights activists, and his elevation to the top job is likely to stir further concerns over civic freedoms in the communist state.

Holding two posts simultaneously as party chief and president would raise additional concerns about power consolidation, analysts have said. Vietnam has a four-person collective leadership, which includes the Communist party chief, president, prime minister and National Assembly chair.