The Wall Street Journal reported that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas planned the devastating attacks on Israel with the assistance of Iranian security officials, who gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut more than a week ago. The paper wrote that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land, and sea incursions, the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Similar to the Yom Kippur war, Hamas attacked Israel on a Jewish holy day, when the terrorist group knew the country would be distracted.
Hamas and Iran also knew that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has been preoccupied this year with massive countrywide protests against judicial reforms. In addition, the Israel government was getting close to signing a peace deal with Saudi Arabia — something that would be unacceptable to Iran, an enemy of Saudi Arabia.
According to the Wall Street Journal, details of the Hamas operation were apparently refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction based in Lebanon.
In response, U.S. officials said they haven’t yet seen evidence of Iran's involvement in the surprise attacks. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.”
On Monday, White House spokesperson John Kirby said although Iran bore "a degree of complicity," the administration had yet to uncover "hard, tangible evidence" of its involvement."
"While U.S. and Israeli officials said they have no firm evidence so far that Iran authorized or directly coordinated the attack that killed more than 900 Israelis and wounded thousands, current and former intelligence officials said the assault bore hallmarks of Iranian support, and noted officials in Tehran have boasted publicly about the huge sums in military aid provided to Hamas in recent years," The Washington Post reported.
In recent years, Hamas has benefited from massive infusions of Iranian cash, as well as technical help for manufacturing rockets and drones with advanced guidance systems, in addition to training in military tactics — some of which occurred in camps outside Gaza, officials said.
Suzanne Maloney, the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, said to ABC News: "It's impossible to imagine that an operation this ambitious, on a scope and scale of what we've seen over the course of the past few days, didn't have some foreknowledge and or complicity by the Iranian leadership."
Added Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst for the Treasury Department and the senior vice president for research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies: "The coordination of multiple penetrations of Israel's barrier — the border fence that had been created — the ability to penetrate it in multiple places, possibly with the help of a cyberattack — all of this points to a sophistication that we've not seen by Hamas."
Meanwhile, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi congratulated Hamas for what he called a "victory" over Israel.
Peter Malbin ✉
Peter Malbin, a Newsmax writer, covers news and politics. He has 30 years of news experience, including for the New York Times, New York Post and Newsweek.com.
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