What’s Iran's role in the Hamas offensive against Israel?

Hamas’ “unprecedented” attack on Israel showed that Tel Aviv hasn’t been able to entirely secure its contentious border with occupied Palestine territories.

The Palestinian group’s sophisticated offensive surprised both Israel, “a settler-colonial state” and its allies, making some officials to suggest that a non-state actor alone couldn’t have carried out the attack and that some outside power is involved.

Western intelligence officials and analysts, point fingers at Iran for helping Hamas break the perception of the Israeli military’s invincibility.

But, besides the usual phrases of support, Iran has denied any role in Hamas’ offensive.

“You really made the Islamic Ummah happy with this innovative and victorious operation,” said Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, according to Iran's official news agency IRNA.

Hamas also rejected Iranian hands in its “Operation Al Aqsa Storm”, which is “a Palestinian and Hamas decision”, according to the group’s senior official Mahmoud Mirdawi. But a Wall Street Journal article quoting “senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah”, an Iran-backed Shia group in Lebanon, claimed that “Iranian security officials helped plan” the former’s lightning attack.

“It’s very difficult to talk about Iran’s specific role in Hamas’ resistance war that is taking place in Palestine at the moment. Hamas and Iran have historically had an interesting relationship to say the least,” Ramzy Baroud, an author and a Palestinian political analyst, told TRT World.

While Iran has long been “closer” to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, an Iran-backed group, the relationship between Hamas and Tehran has gotten stronger over the years.

This is due to Hamas’ ties with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Shia Arab political party with an armed wing, according to Baroud.

But the two groups have not always been so close.

During the Syrian civil war in the last decade, Hamas backed the mostly Sunni-dominated opposition groups against Bashar al Assad’s regime, an ally of Iran, leading to a split between Tehran and the Palestinian group.

But their relations were repaired in 2017 after Russian- and Iran-backed Assad’s regime forces took an upper hand in the conflict.

“What happened on Saturday October 7th is Hamas returning fully to its original relationship with Iran and Hezbollah. In another word, Hamas has resituated itself back into what is known as the axis of resistance within the Middle East,” Baroud said.

The 'axis of resistance' refers to an informal political and military alliance between Iran, the Assad regime, Hezbollah and other anti-US and anti-Israel groups across the Middle East from Iraq to Yemen and Syria.

While Iran denies its involvement in Hamas’ attack, Hezbollah and PIJ, the two Tehran-backed groups, should have some knowledge of Hamas’ deadly multi-pronged strike on Israel, according to Baroud.

Alon Liel, the former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, feels a strong Iranian influence in the recent Hamas attack. “Our feeling is that the enemy is a powerful country” rather than an armed group says Liel, referring to Iran.

“I have no evidence, but the operation on October 7th was a huge and very sophisticated operation,” Liel tells TRT World.

“There is absolutely no way that Hamas would have organised or coordinated with PIJ and Hezbollah as Iran was not informed. Iran must have been informed of this,” Baroud said.

To what extent Iran has been involved in Hamas’ offensive, whether it will further escalate tensions or not and how much Tehran has prepared for any escalation with Israel and the US are question marks whose answers would “be seen” in coming days and weeks, said Baroud.

“It’s almost certain that Iran is part of Hamas’ calculation and Tehran is part of something much bigger than what is already taking place.”

Israel and Western reactions

Israel is not sure about Iranian involvement saying that they have not made up their mind yet on whether Tehran played any role in “planning and training” for Hamas attack.

Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, has reacted to Iran’s possible role in a cautious way. ​​“We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship,” he said.

Some Western analysts also strongly believed that Saturday’s operation, which was as well planned and executed as by any regular army, can not happen without a state actor’s help.

Michael Knights, an expert on Iranian-backed militia groups, told The Washington Post that Hamas’s operation must have been “practiced and carefully planned somewhere. A whole bunch of fortified positions fell to sophisticated combined arms-breaching attacks. And you don’t just wing that.”

Experts believe that a significant part of Hamas’s rocket production originated in Iran. In a recent barrage of aerial attacks, Hamas have launched more than 5,000 rockets to Israeli cities, showing the size of its arsenal.

But on the other side some express don’t see a direct Iranian involvement, pointing out that it would not be easy for Hamas fighters to go abroad from Gaza, an isolated Palestinian enclave, for receiving training from Iranians.

What makes Hamas a difficult target for Israel and its allies is its independent decision-making process, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“This is a war between Hamas and Israel in which Iran is supporting Hamas, but Hamas is calling the shots,” Riedel told the Washington Post. Riedel also strongly believes that there are no Iranian “advisers” in Gaza.

Yoram Schweitzer, a former member of the Israeli intelligence community who heads the Program on Terrorism and Low-Intensity Conflict at the INSS, an Israeli think-tank, told TRT World in a 2021 interview that Hamas works independently.

While Iran and Hezbollah “wanted to emphasise” their connections with Hamas, the Palestinian group has “always maintained some kind of autonomy and independence of decision-making”, said Shweitzer. “Hamas has never subjected itself to neither Iranian interests nor Hezbollah’s interests.”

Shweitzer wasn’t available to comment for this story as he was preparing to join the Israeli reserve force and could not have time to talk on the subject. He is among 300,000 people the Israeli army called up, which is the largest in the country’s history since 1948.