Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad told the British broadcaster that Iran had been an instrumental factor in engineering the attack that has killed more than 1,200 people.
Mr. Hamad said that other countries and organizations also conspired in the attack, but he did not give any names, adding that the violence was a response to attacks on Muslims by Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
This comes as a report in The Wall Street Journal claimed that senior members of both Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah had disclosed that Iranian security officials played a role in planning Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The decision to launch the attack received approval at a meeting held in Beirut the previous Monday, according to the WSJ report.
Ali Barakeh, a member of Hamas’s exiled leadership, made the remarks in an interview on Oct. 9 with The Associated Press in his office in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.
Mr. Barakeh said that Iran and Hezbollah have helped Hamas in the past, but that since the 2014 Gaza war, Hamas has been making its own rockets and training its own combatants.
Hamas has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. It remained relatively low-key over the past two years, having raised speculation on its increased focus on the economy. Meanwhile, this gave rise to other Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad, which have executed repeated attacks on Israel.
Iran has made no public admission of involvement in the recent attack, which followed just days after its supreme leader, Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, called for violence against Israel.
‘Evidence Lacking’
Meanwhile, the U.S. government says it still lacks sufficient evidence to link Tehran to the attack on Oct. 7, according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as reported by CNN on Oct. 11.“We’re looking to acquire further intelligence. But as I stand here today, while Iran plays this broad role – sustained, deep and dark role in providing all of this support and capabilities to Hamas – in terms of this particular gruesome attack on October 7, we don’t currently have that information,” he said at a White House press conference.
The Hamas invasion is the worst attack on Israel in five decades with more than 1,200 people killed and several thousand injured. Many of those killed were women, children, and babies, some of whom were beheaded.
Multi-Pronged Attack
According to Jonathan Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum, Iran’s involvement is part of a multi-pronged attack to diminish Israel’s morale.
The shadow war by Iran against Israel by utilizing proxy groups has been long-standing. Last weekend’s attack also serves to weaken Israel’s influence in the Middle East and shatter relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which are U.S. allies.
Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei previously issued a stark warning prior to the attacks amid efforts by Israel and Saudi Arabia to balance relations, which suffered a major setback due to the recent events.
“The position of the Islamic Republic is that countries that make the gamble of normalization with Israel will lose. They are betting on a losing horse,” he told Iranian state media, adding: “Today, the Palestinian movement is more active than ever.”
