Iran planned and green-lighted the Hamas terror attack on Israel, according to a Sunday report by the Wall Street Journal.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had reportedly conspired alongside terror organization Hamas to assault and invade Israel since August, according to the Wall Street Journal. (RELATED: ‘Significant Military Activities’ Authorized After Israeli Security Cabinet Confirms War Status)
The IRGC reportedly held several meetings in Beirut with Hamas and three other Iran-allied militia groups over the weeks leading up to the attack on Israel, per the outlet.
Breaking: Iran helped plan Hamas’s attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting last Monday https://t.co/7U1fUb3gXI pic.twitter.com/WIu1VBLtzd
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 8, 2023
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mirdawi denied Iran’s involvement, claiming the terror organization carried out the events on their own. “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,” he said, per the Wall Street Journal,
Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lauded the attacks on X (formerly Twitter). “Today, the Palestinian youth and the Palestinian movement is more energetic, more alive, and more prepared than it has ever been during the last 80 years,” he posted.
Israel blamed Iran for the attacks, per the Wall Street Journal.
“We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the U.N, Gilad Erdan, said.
The strike was supposedly timed to capitalize on a period in which the Israeli government would be distracted with discord in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The strikes were also an attempt to derail normalization discussions between Israel and Saudi Arabia, per the report.
Lina Khatib, director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Middle East Institute at the University of London said it’s highly unlikely that the attacks could not have been pulled off without Iranian support, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” she said, “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”
Israel was attack by Hamas early Saturday. Hamas sent over 2,000 missiles from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, per the outlet. The attacks are considered the deadliest since the Yom Kippur War, with over 600 killed and over 700 missing. Multiple citizens have been taken hostage — including Americans, according to reports.
U.S. officials have promised to back Israel in their war against Hamas.