WSJ: Iran helped plan Hamas attack over weeks, gave go-ahead

A senior U.S. administration official had said on Sunday that “it’s too early to say whether the state of Iran was directly involved or planning and supporting. I’m not going to get ahead of that.”

(JNS)

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped plan the Hamas attacks on Israel and green-lit them in Beirut during a meeting on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing senior Hamas and Hezbollah members.

In a call with journalists on Sunday, a senior U.S. administration official, who is not allowed to be named, had said that “it’s too early to say whether the state of Iran was directly involved or planning and supporting. I’m not going to get ahead of that.”

Later in the call, the official said, “We don’t have anything to indicate Iran was involved in this specific—what is unfolding now. But in terms of Iran’s full support for Hamas—and Hamas would not exist without that support over many, many years and decades. Obviously, that is a fact. And that is why we continue to hold Iran accountable for its support for terrorist groups, whether Hamas or Lebanese Hezbollah.”

Also on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press that “in this moment, we don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out.”

Blinken also told George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week on Sunday that “we haven’t yet seen direct evidence that Iran was behind this particular attack or involved.”

“A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East,” per The Wall Street Journal. “Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.”

On Sunday, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said: “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran.”

“The truth comes out,” wrote Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “Iran helped plot the terror attack on Israel—and Joe Biden gave them $6 billion.”

“Iran planned the attacks on Israel while Biden was sending $6 billion to Tehran. When will the White House stop lying about it?” wrote Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

“We all suspected it, but now we know it’s true,” wrote Shayndi Raice, the Journal‘s deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and North Africa, of the report that Iran helped plan the attacks.

Published on Sun, 08 Oct 2023 18:28:25 -0400. Original article link