Iranian FM Discusses Israel-Hamas Conflict With Palestinian Leaders

Speaking about the uptick in Iranian proxy attacks on US forces, White House spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden has directed the Department of Defense to brace for more and respond appropriately.

He reiterated that there had been an uptick in such attacks over the last week, and especially over the last few days, but the US would not allow threats to its interests in the region to "go unchallenged."

He said the United States believed these groups were supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the Iranian government, which was also continuing to support the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.

"We know that Iran is closely monitoring these events, and in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict for their own good, or for that of Iran," he said.

There has been an increase in attacks on U.S. forces since the conflict in Israel intensified on October 7 when militants from the Palestinian group Hamas launched a brutal attack on southern Israel.

"We are deeply concerned about the potential for any significant escalation of these attacks in the days ahead," Kirby said.

Biden has sent naval power to the Middle East in the past two weeks, including two aircraft carriers, other warships and about 2,000 Marines.

"We know Iran's goal is to maintain some level of deniability here, but we're not going to allow them to do that," Kirby said. "We also are not going to allow any threat to our interests in the region to go unchallenged."

Herzog said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) discovered a USB drive on one of the dead militants containing instructions for constructing a cyanide dispersion device.

The surprise attack on October 7 when thousands of terrorists infiltrated Israel after thousands of rockets rained down from Gaza, saw over 1,400 civilians slaughtered and hundreds more soldiers. At least 212 hostages are now being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

During an interview with the Sky News, Herzog said the origin of the instructions could possibly be traced back to a 2003 Al Qaeda blueprint for chemical weaponry.

Herzog stated, "It's Al Qaeda material. Official Al Qaeda material. We are dealing with ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hamas."

"What we went through is evil. We have to uproot it, and when you uproot evil, you see people supporting evil, you see them in demonstrations in London or anywhere else in the world. Why are you supporting evil? What's the story? Do you really believe that human beings need to be tortured? Civilians, pregnant women?" he added.

With the majority of Hamas' capabilities coming from its main backer, Iran, the link to cyanide capabilities coming from the regime cannot be ruled out either with the regime having long links to chemical warfare.

A 1990 US Department of Defense report concluded that both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons in Halabja during the Iran-Iraq war. Iran allegedly attacked the town with cyanide gas bombs and artillery, and Iraqi forces allegedly used a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents. 

The secretary general of the party, Sadegh Mahsouli, and the chairman of the party’s central council, Morteza Aghatehrani, have not made any public comments about the war raging in the Middle East. Considering that they are close allies with many top officers of the Revolutionary Guard, the reason for their silence remains a mystery.

The Paydari party has its tentacles in all government institutions including the parliament where their members form a very influential minority that often takes a leading role amid the weak presence of established conservative and reformist parties.

Paydari, which has always expressed maximum hostility towards Israel, however, in a statement earlier this month called the Hamas attack on Israel a “triumphant” operation and congratulated the “Palestinian resistance groups’ command”.

Mahsouli and Aghatehrani’s silence is particularly notable, as many other politicians -- including reformists such as the former President Mohammad Khatami whose rhetoric against Israel is generally very mild in comparison with hardliners -- have extensively condemned Israel in the past two weeks.

Mahsouli, a former Revolutionary Guard officer and a business tycoon who served in the government of the hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as minister of interior and minister of welfare and social security, has been the party’s leader in the past three years.

Many believe Mahsouli, then interior minister, was the man behind the alleged rigging of the 2009 elections which secured a second term for the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is among the officials of the Islamic Republic designated by the European Union.

Aghatehrani who is the chairman of the parliament’s cultural committee this week spoke to the media about the upcoming elections of the parliament and Assembly of Experts in March.

The Assembly, a constitutional body, is tasked with selecting the Islamic Republic’s next supreme leader. Reformists allege the party is planning to manipulate the assembly’s elections to suit its own interests.

Aghatehrani is known for having been a protégé of Ayatollah Mohhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. The sixty-six-year-old cleric studied at Canada’s McGill; a university very popular with Mesbah-Yazdi’s circle in the early 1990s.

Aghatehrani then obtained a US Green Card while studying for a PhD in Middle East Studies at the State University of New York at Binghampton. There, he founded the Islamic Institute of New York and Razi Islamic school in Woodside.

Aghatehrani returned to Iran and to Mesbah-Yazdi’s famous Imam Khomeini Institute, a seminary in Qom, in 2004. A year later when Ahmadinejad was first elected to presidency, Aghatehrani was invited to join his government as the cabinet’s “ethics teacher”.

The party, and Aghatehrani as a lawmaker, are said to be behind a drive to purge government institutions of all rival factions and “Islamization” of the Iranian society including imposing tighter control on universities and other educational institutions, strict enforcement of compulsory hijab, and controlling the media and the cyberspace.

The drive to establish Paydari’s monopoly in the government and higher education came to be known as “the purification project.” Former parliament speaker and moderate conservative Ali Larijani, who among others oppose hardliners and are seen as centrists in Iranian politics, coined the term in May indirectly attacking the Paydari.

Paydari members had circulated a rumor that Larijani was trying to head an electoral block for the March parliamentary elections. “There is no talk about the elections or a nationwide slate, nor is there any consultation with other [political groups]. Therefore, the purification [-seeking] current need not worry,” Larijani responded in a brief letter and added that his ultra-hardliner rivals who blocked him from running in the presidential elections of 2020 could not expect to “create fake rivalry” and interest in the parliamentary elections.

"If the fingers on the trigger were Hamas’s, the strings were being pulled from Tehran," he said, calling for the UK to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which controls Iran's many proxies across the region.

The UK's counter-extremism commissioner, Robin Simcox, also had a similar stance, saying that continued legal support for the IRGC would not be sustainable. The IRGC has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the US State Department since April 2019, but the UK has yet to do so.

Fox criticized the UK for failing to list the IRGC as a terrorist group, despite the fact that "£100 million of investment goes from Tehran to Hamas terrorists" annually and called for closing Iranian banks that operate from the City of London and stopping Iran Air flights from Heathrow.

The UK has imposed sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities since Mahsa Amini's death in September 2022 as a response to human rights violations committed by the regime's IRGC forces. But, proscription would have made belonging to the group, funding it, or expressing support for its activities in the UK criminal.

The British government exacerbated sanctions, pledging to step up protection for Iranian journalists based in the United Kingdom, following the suspension of Iran International's UK operations due to continued threats to its employees and based on advice from the London Metropolitan Police.

The Iranian government has repeatedly threatened Iran International and other Persian broadcasters based abroad.

The refusal to proscribe the IRGC has caused sharp political criticism, as the opposition Labour Party calls for its proscription under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

Though he asserted that the decision is not his to make, the talks of action on Israel's northern front, following Hamas' declaration of war against Israel on October 7, it will be further warning that all civilians in Israel remain at risk as Iran's largest proxy Hezbollah gears for war.

“Some consider a direct missile attack on Haifa to be the most practical course of action. We will carry out this task without hesitation if it is necessary and required," said Fadavi. "However, I am not the one who determines the assignment.”

He made the remarks at a gathering of students supporting Gaza at the Tehran University Mosque, though last week also threatened of “another shockwave” if Israel does not end "atrocities" in Gaza, referring to the bombardment of Israeli air strikes beating down on the strip after Hamas' massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7.

Since Hamas' surprise assault on Israel which saw over 1,400 civilians slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, plus hundreds more soldiers, Iran's threats did not outline a clear detailed plan of action. However, the acting IRGC Commander has stated a very direct warning on Israeli lands, threatening to activate its proxies not only on Israel's borders, but as far afield as Yemen. Just days ago, the US intercepted Houthi missiles from Yemen on their way to Israel, showing the Iranian proxy network is on full alert.

The Iran-allied militias have also begun attacking US troops' bases in Iraq and Syria as the conflict begun by Hamas spreads further afield.