Poor communication between local and federal law enforcement contributed to the mounting security failures that led to the assassination attempt on former President Trump, experts say.

Nearly 90 minutes after law enforcement spotted the would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old managed to evade law enforcement and climb onto a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the former president. He opened fire at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally site, striking Trump in the ear, killing an audience member and critically injuring two others.

Text messages revealed local law enforcement officers shared information with each other as Crooks caught their attention before the shooting. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testified at a joint Senate oversight hearing on Tuesday, though, that information about Crooks was not relayed from local to federal officers.

"On the surface, it seems like a clear communications failure," Michael Verden, a former Secret Service agent and the founder of the Lake Forest Group, a security firm, told Fox News Digital. "I've done these events with presidents, and you have to have a strong, seamless communications plan."

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The communication breakdown became apparent after text messages between local law enforcement officers revealed that they had spotted Crooks 90 minutes prior to the shooting and flagged him as a suspicious individual. Despite escalating pictures of Crooks to command, the would-be assassin managed to evade capture.

"Anybody with any authority at that rally needs to be able to talk to one another," Verden said. "Butler County and the Secret Service should have been talking to one another."

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"They didn't have, what we call, a joint command center," Verden said. "You could have had state, local and federal representatives in one location all sharing what their people on the ground were encountering."

"All roads lead back to communication," he said.

Verden expressed his surprise that no one approached Crooks, who was stationed by the American Glass Research building before the shooting. The former Secret Service agent said that the agency has a department that tackles "this exact scenario."

"We have a protective intelligence team, and it's typically a Secret Service agent and a local law enforcement officer who are working together," he said.

"They are there for one reason – to approach any and all suspicious people," he said.

"I'm pretty confident that there were protective intelligence teams at that site to guide teams at that site," he said. "And if there weren't, that is a huge inconsistency." 

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Charles Marino, a former supervisory special agent for the Secret Service and a senior advisor for the Department of Homeland Security, told Fox News Digital that the events on July 13 highlighted "both the worst and the best of the agency."

"There was a catastrophic failure of the overall security planning and implementation leading up to and including this fateful day, which would ultimately expose additional cracks in the areas of communication, coordination, and overall strained and limited resources of the agency," he said.

Marino said that the acts of courage that the agents revealed during the immediate aftermath of the shooting reveal why the Secret Service is "worth fixing."

"While the incident in Butler is one of the worst-case scenarios for the agency, the best of the Secret Service was called upon to serve as the last line of defense in response to failures in the advance process," he said.

"The selfless acts of courage and determination demonstrated by Secret Service agents who immediately responded to the sounds of gunfire to shield former President Trump with their own bodies while the gunfire continued, and the actions and skill of Secret Service counter snipers are what make the Secret Service worth fixing – the undeniable dedication to the mission, people, and country they protect."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard announced Wednesday, but nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israel was immediately blamed for the assassination after pledging to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the terrorist group's Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish State, which killed 1,200 people and roughly 250 others were abducted, according to the Associated Press.

Haniyeh was in Tehran for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's swearing-in on Tuesday. Pezeshkian was sworn in with chants of "Death to America, Israel."

On Tuesday morning, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei posted on the social media platform X that he met with Haniyah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement Secretary General Ziyad al-Nakhalah.

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Iran did not provide any details on how Haniyeh was killed. The incident is under investigation.

Analysts on Iranian state television immediately cast blame on Israel for the assassination.

Israel did not immediately comment, but it usually does not make public comments on assassinations carried out by their Mossad intelligence agency.

"The fact that such a high-ranking Hamas leader was assassinated on Iranian soil was an added bonus for Israel particularly directly after he participated in the inauguration ceremony of the new Islamic Republic president," Lisa Daftari, Middle East analyst and editor-in-chief at The Foreign Desk, told Fox News. 

"It sends a clear message that Israel does not differentiate between the Islamic Republic and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah."

"We have seen Israel conduct very targeted and strategic hits against key players in the Islamic Republic such as nuclear scientists," Daftari continued. "We've also seen Israel conduct targeted hits on weapons depots and other critical infrastructures in Iran, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. 

"Given the numerous threats that surround Israel, it has been forced to use its military and intelligence capabilities to pinpoint direct threats and to strategically eliminate them. We assume at this point that the assassination of Haniyeh was made by the same calculations."

Hamas said Haniyeh was killed "in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of Iran’s new president."

"Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free people of the world, brother leader Ismail Haniyeh a martyr," the statement said.

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The group, in another statement, cited Haniyeh as saying that the Palestinian cause has "costs" and "we are ready for these costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, and for the sake of God Almighty, and for the sake of the dignity of this nation."

Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip five years ago and was living in exile in Qatar. The top Hamas leader in Gaza is Yehya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attack against Israel.

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An Israeli airstrike in April killed three of Haniyeh's sons and four of his grandchildren in Gaza.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 90,000 wounded in the war in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, although the count does not differentiate between civilians and terrorists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.