Amid decades of regional hostility between Israel and Iran, the Palestinian militant group Hamas has never been fully under the control of the Islamic Republic.
In recent years it has taken funding from Qatar, drawn propaganda lessons from Islamic State and maintained ties with Egyptian intelligence.
But Saturday’s multi-pronged attack on Israel, backed by Iran, prompted a reassessment of the depth of the relationship between Hamas and Tehran. The main question for Israel and regional powers is whether the Tehran-backed groups that pose an existential threat to Israel – the so-called Axis of Resistance – can explain how Hamas developed the ability to launch such a bold attack.
“The axis of resistance . . . aims to eliminate and destroy Israel,” said Abdul Majid Awad, director of Hamas’ political and media relations office in Lebanon. Awad said other allies were not informed of the operation until after it began, but Iran and its most important proxy, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, had been “watching every moment” of the attack.
More than 700 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed and at least 100 Israelis have been kidnapped since Hamas launched its attack in the Jewish state’s worst conflict since its founding in 1948. Gaza health officials reported 560 deaths in Gaza. enclave.
Iran has worked hard in recent years to strengthen ties with Palestinian militant groups, according to Israeli officials, portraying itself as a champion of their cause at a time when several Arab countries have been trying to normalize relations with the Jewish state.
Israel’s assessment is that Tehran has promoted the transfer of funds, weapons and even drugs through Jordan into the occupied West Bank as part of its efforts to incite Palestinian militants to launch attacks on Israeli targets.
“Iran views the Palestinian arena as a major opportunity to advance its vision of surrounding Israel with a ‘ring of fire’ . . . Heavily armed terror forces could launch firepower and cross-border attacks against Israel under Iranian influence,” Israeli defense analysis Said the teacher Yaakov Lappin. “This is part of Iran’s goal to challenge Israel from within and at its borders.”
Predominately Shiite Iran already has a proxy in Gaza in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller group that sometimes competes with Hamas and sometimes fights alongside it. But bringing the larger and more powerful Hamas, which controls Gaza, more fully into its orbit would be a coup.
Hamas “is not in Iran’s pocket. It has multiple relationships with countries like Qatar and Turkey,” said Mohag Ali, a Beirut-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East think tank. “A new alliance with Iran, however important, can only be formed if it is reciprocated and supported by Hamas.”
Israel estimates that PIJ and Hamas, which also claimed involvement in Saturday’s attacks, receive $100 million a year from Iran. Tehran also provides training for fighter jets and expertise on how to improve rocket production to make rockets more lethal and accurate.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said of the attack on Israel: “God willing, the cancer that usurped the Zionist regime will be eradicated by the Palestinian people and the resistance forces across the region.”
Yet Hamas — a Sunni Islamic movement that formed during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the 1980s — has always maintained strategic ambiguity in order to maintain maximum support for its cause. “All those who oppose the Zionist regime are our friends – the Palestinian cause is universal,” Ahmed Youssef, a senior adviser to the Hamas leader, told the Financial Times last year.
Israel and Iran are waging a shadow war across the Middle East — in places like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — through rockets, drone strikes and assassinations. Iran harasses Israel from the north via Lebanese Hezbollah and from the northeast, with Iranian and Hezbollah fighters operating freely along the Syrian border. In 2021, Israel and Iran conducted tit-for-tat naval operations in the Mediterranean involving civilian and paramilitary vessels.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Iranian security officials “helped plan” Saturday’s raid, but Iran and its proxies denied the report. “We firmly and firmly support Palestine; however, we have not participated in the Palestinian reaction because it is entirely the Palestinian reaction,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations said.
A senior Israeli military official said that while he believed “the Iranians were involved,” he warned against exaggerating Tehran’s role.
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, said that Iran established Hamas and organizations such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Lebanese Hezbollah, and various Shiite militias in Syria in Gaza to “destroy the state of Israel…”. . . We must ask ourselves whether the war waged by Hamas is the beginning of a multi-front attack. “
While Hamas’s offensive has been a long time in the making – Israeli analysts believe it could take months or even a year to take shape – the timing could coincide with Iran and Hamas’ rivalry with Israel and Saudi Arabia concerns about the growing prospects of a ground-Arab normalization deal.
Khamenei also recently warned that betting on “normalization with the Zionist regime” was a “mistake,” while Iran’s foreign ministry described the Hamas incursion as “spontaneous.”
One event that showed increased cooperation among Israel’s enemies was the visit in April of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to Lebanon to meet with Palestinian factions in the country. He asked them to “unite and level up”.
Other members of the Hamas leadership visit Iran and meet regularly with Hezbollah, while some Hamas leaders have moved to Lebanon.
The growing influence of the Hamas leadership in Lebanon means that Hezbollah and Lebanon are “inextricably linked to intra-Palestinian tensions and violence against the Israeli occupation,” Hag Ali said, adding that such dalliances It could lead to wider regional conflict.
In a sign of the widening conflict, Israel shelled southern Lebanon on Monday, prompted by cross-border attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Israeli military said soldiers, backed by helicopters, killed at least two gunmen as they crossed the border.
Hag Ali continued: “If Hamas faces existential danger from Israeli retaliatory attacks and ground incursions, what good is this alliance if the conflict does not expand to include attacks on other fronts?”
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