Iran’s Direct Help to Hamas’s October 7 War on Israel

The West Must Stand United Against Both Hamas and Iran

by Con Coughlin, GATESTONE  •  October 17, 2023 at 5:00 am

• The precise details of Iran’s direct role in authorising the attack are gradually coming to light, with officials involved in the investigation insisting that both Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah (a terrorist organization Iran controls) were involved in the planning of the Hamas terrorist operation.
• This is hardly surprising given the estimated $100 million a year Tehran gives Hamas to help develop its terrorist infrastructure, part of the £13.1 billion Iran has spent on developing its terrorist network throughout the Middle East during the past decade, from supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen to Shia militias in Iraq.
• The true extent of Iran’s military support for Hamas was recently laid bare by the movement’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, when he revealed that funds received from Tehran had helped to fund the development of missile and defence systems designed and built in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
• The significance of Iran’s involvement with Hamas’s terrorist activity was also evident at the weekend, when Haniyeh met with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in Qatar, a country that also has a long history of funding Hamas.
• The extent of Iran’s meddling in the current war in the Middle East should certainly serve as a wake-up call to the US and its European allies about the danger Iran poses not just to the region, but the wider world.
• With the Saudi negotiations now on hold, the US and its allies should accept the folly of trying to maintain a diplomatic dialogue with Tehran in the hope that the Iranian regime may be persuaded to sign up to a new nuclear deal.
• As Iran’s open support for Hamas has demonstrated, the ayatollahs have no interest in reaching a peaceful accommodation with the West.
• The Iranian regime is only concerned with supporting groups that carry out unimaginable acts of violence against innocent civilians, and should be treated with serious deterrence, if not more, and with the enemy status they fully deserve.

The precise details of Iran’s direct role in authorising the Hamas attack on Israel are gradually coming to light, with officials involved in the investigation insisting that both Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah (a terrorist organization Iran controls) were involved in the planning of the Hamas terrorist operation. Pictured: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei meets with Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist organization. (Image source: khamenei.ir)<
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While the total destruction of Hamas is understandably Israel’s main priority in the aftermath of the organisation’s horrific massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, ultimately it should be Iran that is held to account for committing these atrocities.

Iran’s complicity in Hamas’s merciless assault against Israeli civilians cannot be underestimated; it has been reflected in the way the Iranian leadership has openly celebrated the indiscriminate slaughter of elderly women and babies as well as multiplying credible reports, including an almost comical one from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, “Call[ing] On Iranians Not To Speak Out On Iranian Involvement In ‘The Hamas-Israel Conflict’ — For Fear Of Harming Iranian Interests And International Status”.

The Biden administration seems to be doing everything it can to avoid seeing direct involvement by Iran.

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