The Biden administration insists that it doesn’t have any proof of Iran’s “direct” involvement within the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The Biden administration has apparently completely dismissed the Wall Street Journal report on October 9, “Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks,” in addition to the Washington Post’s “Hamas obtained weapons and coaching from Iran, officers say.”
Hamas leaders have certainly lengthy been boasting of the monetary and navy help they obtain from Iran to allow them to pursue the Jihad (holy warfare) to slaughter Jews and extinguish Israel. Based on the statements of those leaders, it’s massively clear that with out Iran’s help, and reported planning, Hamas couldn’t have carried out the bloodbath of Israelis close to the border with the Gaza Strip.
Unlike the US administration, a rising variety of Arabs are satisfied that Iran is the “head of the snake” and that it was concerned, deeply, within the Hamas bloodbath. These Arabs have taken to social media platforms to voice their outrage over the Iranian regime’s accountability for the assault.
Hamas’s consultant in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdulhadi, revealed final week that his group coordinated with Iran and its Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah earlier than and throughout the bloodbath. “We coordinated with Hezbollah and with Iran and the Axis [of Resistance] earlier than, throughout and after the battle on the highest degree,” Abdulhadi mentioned in an interview with Newsweek.
On October 12, Abdulhadi was amongst a variety of Hamas officers who went to Beirut Airport to welcome Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. “We got here to Beirut Airport to welcome the Iranian international minister and thank him for Iran’s solidarity with Palestine,” Abdulhadi instructed reporters.
Abdulhadi and different Hamas officers have been holding common conferences with Iranian officers in Beirut and Tehran over the previous few years. Last month, the Iranian international minister mentioned after a closed assembly with leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Beirut that Iran stays dedicated to supporting the Palestinian “resistance and the liberation [of Palestine].” When Iranian officers speak about supporting the Palestinian “resistance,” they’re referring to atrocities similar to those inflicted by Hamas on October 7.
Another Hamas official, Ali Baraka, instructed Russia’s state-run RT outlet that his group had secretly deliberate the assault for 2 years and didn’t inform some other factions or allies, together with Iran and Hezbollah, of the “zero hour.” Baraka confirmed that Iran “provides us money and weapons.”
Hamas has by no means hid the truth that it receives monetary and navy help from Iran. In 2020, senior Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar revealed that Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, had handed him $22 million in his first assembly with him in 2006. Al-Zahar mentioned that when he was appointed as Hamas’s international minister, he met with then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and offered him with a number of calls for, which the Iranian president referred to Soleimani.
In 2021, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan mentioned that “what has been revealed about Soleimani’s position in supporting the Palestinian resistance is barely a small half to date.” Hamdan disclosed that Soleimani had despatched Kornet anti-tank guided missiles to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief within the Gaza Strip, mentioned in 2017 that Soleimani had “contacted us and put all of Iran’s navy and technological capabilities at our disposal.” According to Sinwar, Soleimani communicated with the navy wing of Hamas, which carried out the October 7 carnage in Israel, in addition to the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and provided to assist them of their Jihad (holy warfare) in opposition to Israel. “We are with each alliance that can serve the Palestinian nationwide trigger and serve the resistance of our folks,” Sinwar added.
Hamas’s savage assault on Israel got here within the framework of the Iranian-backed want, since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, to remove “the Zionist entity.” Iran’s supreme chief, president and different senior officers have repeatedly referred to as for the destruction of Israel. The October 7 attack, as well as, additionally appears a part of the Iran’s efforts to forestall normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia or any Arab state.
Palestinian politician Jihad al-Khaizaran mentioned that the assault marked “the start of a warfare to liberate the Palestinian territories and remove the Zionist entity.” Al-Khaizaran instructed the Saudi newspaper Okaz: “The Palestinian resistance has been getting ready for the operation for a very long time.”
While many within the West selected to ignore Iran’s position in arming, coaching and funding Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the identical can’t be mentioned about a lot of Arabs who’ve lengthy been warning of Tehran’s expansionist actions within the Middle East. Some of these Arabs have been brazenly speaking about how Iran makes use of its proxies to wreak havoc not solely on Israel, however on some Arab international locations. Through its proxies, the Iranian regime now successfully occupies Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, along with the Gaza Strip. The Arabs, in brief, see clearly what many Westerners apparently wish to stay oblivious to.
Without Iran’s help, Hamas wouldn’t have been capable of maintain onto energy within the Gaza Strip since 2007. At that point, the fear group staged a bloody coup in opposition to Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority after killing a whole bunch of his loyalists. Without Iran’s backing, Hamas and different Palestinian terror teams wouldn’t have been capable of fireplace tens of hundreds of rockets into Israel. Without Iran, Hezbollah wouldn’t be as highly effective as it’s in Lebanon, the place it’s armed with a whole bunch of hundreds of rockets which can be able to be launched at Israel at any second.
Mansour al-Malik, a petroleum engineer from Saudi Arabia, wrote on October 8:
“Hamas is an organization affiliated with the clerical regime in Iran, similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and it’s the similar axis that threatens Saudi Arabia and Kuwait day and evening. We differentiate between a simply trigger and a terrorist axis.”
Kuwaiti political analyst Talal al-Ghazi wrote:
“Hamas’s relations with Iran have been in place since its [Hamas’s] founding. Hamas’s relations with Iran have been since 1990, after they [Hamas] pledged allegiance to Iran and opened an workplace in Tehran. No one ought to inform us that Hamas turned to Iran as a result of the Arabs deserted it. The Arabs didn’t help Hamas as a result of it’s an arm of Iran.”
“Iran has denied any connection to the [Hamas] navy operation, however indicators show in any other case,” commented Egyptian Middle East skilled Huda Raouf.
“It is well-known that Iran has established a relationship with non-state actors and armed teams within the Arab international locations, because it offered them with monetary and navy help and coaching in a approach that created entities parallel to the state establishments. Likewise, the connection with Hamas was a significant key for Iran to affect the Palestinian problem in a approach that makes it lengthen its affect.”
Raouf mentioned that Tehran’s mullahs are afraid that rapprochement between the Arab states and Israel would isolate the Iranian regime regionally. “[Iran] additionally needs to ship messages that it could possibly hinder any efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli battle,” she wrote.
On October 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) printed a report titled:
“Iranian Regime Mouthpiece Kayhan: Iran Is The Mind And Hands Behind Hamas; Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ Was Planned, Orchestrated By Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani Before He Was Killed; Khamenei Hinted In August 2022, August 2023 At ‘The Complete Conquest’ Of Israel”
The subsequent day, October 13, MEMRI printed one other report titled:
“Iranian Website Asr-e Calls On Iranians Not To Speak Out On Iranian Involvement In ‘The Hamas-Israel Conflict’ – For Fear Of Harming Iranian Interests and International Status.”
The report ends:
“It ought to be famous that in its October 10, 2023 editorial, the regime mouthpiece Kayhan took pleasure in Iran’s involvement within the attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in opposition to Israel. It attributed the planning of the attack to IRGC Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, previous to his January 2020 assassination in a U.S. airstrike, and it mentioned that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had mentioned in an August 2023 speech {that a} large victory was on the horizon.”
The Biden administration seems to be performing as if nothing will cease from failing to confront the Iranian regime, thereby guaranteeing that it’ll view the US administration’s contortions as tacit permission to escalate its proxies’ aggression.
That, actually, is likely one of the causes international locations have proxies: to deflect consideration from themselves to allow them to sit again in consolation and declare “believable deniability.”
What will it take for the US and its allies to understand that the appeasement of the Iranian regime is learn by the mullahs and their proxies as weak spot? If such appeasement continues, make no mistake: at present, the carnage is Israel; tomorrow, it will likely be the US and Europe.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist primarily based in Jerusalem.
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