Senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah tell WSJ that Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’ attack on Israel and gave the green light for it.
Israel National News
Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The sources claimed that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions.
Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, they said.
Asked about the meetings, Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, said however the group planned the attacks on its own. ‘This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,’ he said, while a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the Islamic Republic stood in support of Gaza’s actions but did not direct them.
‘The decisions made by the Palestinian resistance are fiercely autonomous and unwaveringly aligned with the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people,’ the spokesman told WSJ. ‘We are not involved in Palestine’s response, as it is taken solely by Palestine itself.’
Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC on Sunday that Iran gave its backing to the massive assault on Israel.
Hamad stated that the Iranian regime pledged to ‘stand by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem.