Iran assisted with the attack on Israel over a period of weeks

 Iran assisted with the attack on Israel over a period of weeks

DUBAI—Senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-supported militant organization, claim that Iranian security officials participated in the planning of Hamas's surprise attack on Israel on Saturday and approved the strike at a meeting in Beirut last Monday.

According to those people, officers of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been planning the air, land, and sea assaults with Hamas since August. This was the largest violation of Israel's borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

IRGC officers and leaders of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which governs Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant organization and political movement in Lebanon, attended a number of meetings in Beirut where the operation's specifics were polished, according to the sources.

According to American officials, there is no proof of Tehran's involvement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in an interview with CNN that was broadcast on Sunday that "we haven't yet seen confirmation that Iran directed or was involved this particular attack, but there is certainly a long connection."

We currently have no information to support this narrative, a U.S. official said of the meetings.

However, a representative from Europe and a consultant for the Syrian government gave the same narrative of Iran's involvement in the events leading up to the strike as senior Hamas and Hezbollah figures.

Mahmoud Mirdawi, a top Hamas official, claimed that the organization organized the attacks independently when questioned about the meetings. "This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision," he declared.

An inquiry for comment was not answered by the Iranian representative at the UN in New York. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hailed the attacks and predicted that the "Zionist regime will be eliminated at the hands of the Palestinian people and opposition forces throughout the region."

A direct Iranian engagement would bring the long-running dispute between Tehran and Israel into the open, increasing the possibility of wider conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have vowed to attack Iran's leadership if it is determined that Tehran is to blame for the deaths of Israelis.

According to senior Hamas and Hezbollah members as well as an Iranian official, the IRGC's larger strategy is to establish a multi-front threat that can encircle Israel from all directions, including Hezbollah and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of the Palestinian territories in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, also in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel's reputation of invincibility has been pierced by the attack on Saturday, which resulted in at least 700 verified deaths. Israelis are now wondering how their renowned security agencies could have permitted this to happen.

Israel has accused Iran of being directly or indirectly responsible for the strikes.  "It's plain to comprehend that they sought to coordinate. We know that there were meetings in Syria and Lebanon with other commanders of the terror armies that surround Israel. Iran's regional proxies made every effort to cooperate with Iran, according to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, on Sunday.

Iran has been openly acknowledged as providing support to Hamas. Additionally, on Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke with Ismail Haniyeh and Ziyad al-Nakhalah of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine.

Senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah claimed that Iran has been focusing its overseas resources on coordinating, funding, and arming anti-Israel forces like Hamas and Hezbollah while putting aside other regional disputes like its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Hamas and Hezbollah have been labeled as terrorist groups by the US and Israel.

The Iranian official declared, "We are now free to concentrate on the Zionist entity. They are currently incredibly alone.

Israel was targeted because it appeared to be preoccupied with internal political squabbles around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration. The senior Hamas and Hezbollah members claimed that it was also intended to obstruct the progress of U.S.-mediated negotiations to repair relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which Iran viewed as a danger.

The Suez Canal, the Straits of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Sea of Red along with the Arabian Sea could be connected by a chain of American allies if Israeli relations with Gulf Arab states are strengthened in addition to peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, according to Hussein Ibish, senior headquartered scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

For Iran, that is very negative news, Ibish remarked. “If they could execute this, the strategic map shifts substantially to Iran’s harm."

Ismail Qaani, the head of the Quds Force, the IRGC's international military wing, has been in charge of the endeavor to gather Iran's foreign proxies under a single command.

According to The Wall Street Journal, during a conference in Lebanon in April, Qaani established coordination amongst the various forces encircling Israel. This was also the first time that Hamas had direct contact with Hezbollah.

According to the Iranian source, Palestinian organizations acting on Iran's orders mounted a rare series of small-scale attacks on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza around that time. "It was a roaring success," the official declared.

As a Sunni Muslim organization, Hamas has long been supported by Iran, but until recently, when collaboration between the parties increased, it had remained an outsider among Tehran's Shia proxies.

Since August, Quds Force leaders have met with representatives of these organizations at least twice a week in Lebanon to talk about the attack on Israel this weekend and what will happen next, according to the representatives. According to the militant group members, Qaani attended several of the sessions alongside Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, al-Nakhalah of Islamic Jihad, and Saleh al-Arouri of Hamas.

They said that Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, attended at least two of the meetings.

According to Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London, "a violent assault of such scope may have occurred after months of planning and would not have happened absent coordination with Iran." "Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas does not unilaterally decide to wage war without prior explicit approval from Iran."

As Israel's response becomes clearer in the coming days, the ability of the Palestinian and Lebanese militias to communicate with Iran will be put to the test.

People acquainted with the situation stated that Egypt, which is attempting to mediate the dispute, has warned Israeli officials that a ground incursion into Gaza would result in a military reaction from Hezbollah, opening up a second front in the fight. On Sunday, there was a brief gunfight between Israel and Hezbollah.

Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank have been urged by Hamas to take up arms and fight. There have been sporadic incidents in the West Bank, but there have been no reports of clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, as there were when Israel and Gaza last fought for an extended period of time in May 2021.

According to the Iranian source, if Iran were to come under assault, it would retaliate by launching missiles at Israel from Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran as well as by sending fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in Israel's north and east.

It is concerning for Israel because Iran is supporting a coordinated alliance of Arab forces. According to Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Soviet Union served as the ultimate benefactor of Israel's Arab adversaries in prior conflicts and was always able to exert pressure on them to acknowledge a red line or achieve some sort of agreement.

He claimed that "the Soviets never saw Israel as a permanent enemy." "The Iranian government clearly does."