Iran Rejects Role In Hamas Terror Attack, While Continuing Rhetoric
Iran on Monday rejected accusations that it had any role in the terrorist invasion of Israel, despite Hamas representatives thanking Tehran for aiding the group.
Iran on Monday rejected accusations that it had any role in the terrorist invasion of Israel, despite Hamas representatives thanking Tehran for aiding the group.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Naser Kanaani told the media that Palestinians launched the attack relying on their own power and insisted that accusations against Iran have political motives.
Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC on Sunday that Iran provided support to the Palestinian terror group to launch its surprise attack on Israel on Saturday. The Wall Street Journal also reported that both Hamas and Hezbollah sources confirmed the involvement of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in planning the attack and in the final decision to set a date.
The Iranian regime also immediately launched celebrations on Saturday while the killing of Israeli civilians was still going on, and even erected large banners in Tehran within hours bearing the codename for the operation, a fact that betrayed Iran’s foreknowledge of the attack.
The Iranian regime signaled its support for Hamas, which is largely financed and armed by Tehran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s social media, President Ebrahim Raisi and a host of other officials and the state media widely expressed their satisfaction with the attack the very first day.
Hardliner regime loyalists in Iran continued to defend their policies in supporting the Palestinian Islamic Hamas, some by issuing threats against regional countries.
"The best way to destroy Israel is the overthrow of the regional puppet governments. Israel does not have the audacity to attack Iran, with the advanced weapons we possess, we will destroy Israel. We have things they are unaware of." These were the words of Fereydoun Abbasi on Monday, a hardliner member of the Islamic parliament and a former head of Iran’s nuclear agency.
His reference to “puppet governments” is a typical label used by Iranian officials to refer to Saudi Arabia and its allies. Abbasi’s comment shows how shallow the apparent détente is between Tehran and Riyadh, who restored diplomatic ties in March with Chinese mediation. His comments, along with many others since October 7, also show more than ever the Iranian regime’s commitment to eradicate Israel.
Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to Ali Khamenei was quoted on Monday as telling his Syrian counterpart, “Those who believe that by so-called normalization of relations with the Zionists and cutting off ties with the Muslim nations of the region can solve their problems should take heed of these events.”
Kanaani also made it clear during his briefing that the Hamas attack was linked to the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. He underlined that Khamenei had warned Arab countries last week not to engage in such a “gamble” and instead support the Palestinians.
The large-scale terror attack on Israel will probably keep the Islamic Republic firmly in the category of rogue regimes for some time to come. Statements by regime figures clearly show that Iran’s aging ruler Ali Khamenei took the Hamas gamble to disrupt the emerging normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has relentlessly pursued an anti-West, anti-Israel ideology. Its foreign policy is to a large extent the by-product of this ideology based on 20th century propaganda rhetoric largely disseminated at the time by the Soviet Union and its Communist and leftist allies around the globe.
The regime’s proxy in Gaza, Hamas, designated as a terror group by the likes of the UK and US, has taken around 150 hostages into Gaza after a mass infiltration into Israel on Saturday, including women and children.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden spoke again with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, confirming that “dozens” of American citizens are among the hostages seized.
It is Biden’s worst nightmare after a recent deal to secure the release of just five US-Iranian dual nationals saw the regime pocket $6bn in previously frozen funds from South Korea, and another $2.7 billion released from Iraq in June, although not officially part of the ransom.
Robert O’Brien, the former national security adviser under Donald Trump’s presidency, has even called for American special forces to be deployed to Israel to rescue hostages, as the war continues to see the death toll climb beyond 700 on the Israeli side, and close to 500 on the Palestinian.
Speaking to Fox News, O’Brien said this weekend: “There is a direct correlation between taking Americans hostage and these big ransom payments. It has to end.”
Calling for the Biden administration to take urgent action after pictures of US-Israeli citizens began to circulate on social media, he said: “I think we need to get American servicemen who are specially trained to rescue hostages, we need to get them on the ground in Israel right away.”
The hostages in Gaza might prove to be one of the most difficult issues in this conflict, as they are now probably dispersed throughout the heavily populated Gaza strip and under armed guards. Once military operations subside one way or another, it is not clear what Hamas would demand for their release. If Israel invades the territory in full force, it is not clear what Hamas will do with the captives.
One of the citizens known to be missing is Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of hundreds caught up in the war at a festival in Israel’s south. Hundreds of partygoers are still missing, and hundreds were slaughtered as Hamas gunmen landed in the midst of the festival with gliders and went on a killing spree.
Born in Berkeley, California, Goldberg-Polin had recently been discharged from the Israeli army and was working as a medic and waiter in Jerusalem before traveling to India.
US officials have said that at least four American citizens were killed over the weekend and an additional seven were missing and unaccounted for. Dozens more dual nationals are feared missing including German and British passport holders, Thais and Mexicans.
In spite of secretary of state Antony Blinken claiming to have seen no evidence of Iran’s orchestrating the weekend’s atrocities, the US began making moves that cannot be seen as anything but a message to the regime.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Sunday he has ordered the Ford carrier strike group to sail to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, and its approximately 5,000 sailors and deck of warplanes will be accompanied by cruisers and destroyers in a show of force that is meant to be ready to respond to anything, from possibly interdicting additional weapons from reaching Hamas from Iran and conducting surveillance.
The large deployment reflects a US desire to deter any regional expansion of the conflict. But the Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas.
The bloody invasion of Israel by the Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas has caused a tumble in the Iranian economy, with the rial falling and stock market in decline.
At the opening of trading day on Sunday, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) crashed within just 30 minutes, with a sharp decline reported for almost all stocks on trade. Closing at 2.1 million points, the TSE main index dropped over 51 thousand points. The rial began to slightly fall late on Friday, before the attack, while the fall accelerated on Saturday. While for weeks the rial was hovering around 495,000 per US dollar, it broke through the 500,000 on Saturday and dropped to 520,000 on Sunday.
Iran's regime is openly supporting the horror which has seen over 2,000 Israelis wounded, at least 700 dead, and dozens abducted in Hamas's declaration of war, holding state-sponsored street ceremonies. President Ebrahim Raisi defended the atrocities as “the legitimate defense of the Palestinian nation” and held phone calls with Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal.
Tejarat News, a business website in Tehran, said in an article Sunday that the surge in the exchange rates of foreign currencies against the national currency rial is due to the developments in Israel. “Since Saturday, dollar traders are saying that tensions in Israel are the cause of the rise in the dollar's exchange rate,” the website said.
However, the impact of war was being felt in Israel too. According to Bloomberg, Israel’s stock exchange also witnessed the biggest drop since March 2020 and the outbreak of the pandemic while the shekel slumped towards a seven-year low in recent days, the war set to push that further. Israel has also faced a floundering economy amidst political instability since the return of the Netanyahu coalition at the start of the year which has plunged the country into economic and geopolitical turmoil.
The rial, however, has lost its value 12-fold since early 2018, when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran. This has made imports much more expensive and has led to inflation at around 50 percent for the past three years. Some officials and media in Tehran have been warning that tens of millions of people have fallen into poverty because of persistent high inflation, and this in turn has seriously contributed to political instability. Widespread anti-regime protests in 2022 and 2023 are partly attributed to financial hardships ordinary citizens face. For the transfer of such an amount to Iran, the greenlight by the US seems necessary given the country’s sanctions on the regime’s banking system.
The sudden devaluation of the rial came a few weeks after Iran managed to get access to $6 billion of its assets that was blocked In South Korea due to US sanctions as part of a prisoner swap deal with Washington.
Whenever Iran’s economy is in a slump, regime officials start bragging about the positive prospects of releasing Iran’s frozen assets abroad on the control of inflation and freefall of rial, a propaganda line that never delivers. This time is no exception. Fars news agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, ran an article Sunday in line with Tehran’s effort for damage control, claiming that Iran’s unfrozen assets in South Korea and Luxembourg can have a positive psychological impact on the market.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) announced on Friday that Luxembourg has released $1.7 billion of Iran’s frozen funds, following a ruling issued by the country's Supreme Court. “This fund is now available to the Central Bank of Iran.” Former CBI Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said in 2020 that Iran's assets were unfrozen despite an attempt by victims of terror to get the funds as compensation. In 2012, a New York court found there was evidence showing that the Islamic Republic provided "material support and resources to al Qaida for acts of terrorism".
In another case in 2023, a federal judge in New York ordered Iran's central bank and a European intermediary to pay out $1.68 billion to family members of troops killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon.
The attack has also ignited a wave of criticism directed at the Biden Administration over its deal with Iran and the release of funds that Iran is allegedly funneling to its proxies.
In May, Iran International reported that Hamas pressured the Islamic Republic into inviting its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to Tehran hoping to get financial support. Our sources said that although the Islamic Republic continues to provide financial aid to Hamas despite its own economic situation, Tehran is not satisfied with the performance of the group against Israel.
While Hezbollah is by far Iran's richest and most powerful proxy, the combined funds of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are enormous, Hamas and Islamic Jihad receiving a large share of Tehran’s aid. In March 2022, Haniyeh revealed that the Islamic Republic paid a total of $70 million to Hamas to help it develop missiles and defense systems. During an interview with Al-Jazeera, Haniyeh said different countries help in financing the group, but Iran is the biggest donor.
In 2018, US President Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, who recently visited Israel's communities on the Gaza perimeter and toured the terror tunnel the IDF exploded, claimed Iran provided $100 million annually to Hamas compared to $700m annually to Hezbollah.
In a video on the official Al-Qassem Brigades' Telegram channel - the military wing of Hamas - published on Sunday, spokesman Abu Obaidah said, "We thank the Islamic Republic of Iran who provided us with weapons, money and other equipment. He gave us missiles to destroy Zionist fortresses, and helped us with standard anti-tank missiles."