December 1, 2023
by Warren L. Nelson
The Islamic Republic, which has long touted itself as the great defender of the Palestinian cause, has abandoned Hamas in all but rhetoric.
The only real source of support for Hamas now comes from Western liberals who are loudly demanding that Israel cease its military action inside Gaza; these are groups that in the past had most strongly supported Israel in its confrontations with the Arabs.
Here is the current lay of the land.
Hamas: Hamas is an outgrowth of Muslim Brotherhood. No Arab government, with the exception of Qatar, can tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood, least of all the government of Egypt, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood in a coup a decade ago. And Egypt is the only Arab state bordering Gaza. The Arab states are only going through the motions of supporting Hamas. Not a solitary Arab state that has recognized Israel diplomatically has severed relations. Saudi Arabia, which was in talks with Israel when the Hamas offensive began, has announced that it has “suspended” those talks, but not canceled them. Iran is believed to be the main financial supporter of Hamas, but Hamas officials have said Iran has reduced the level of its support in recent years as Iran’s financial plight has worsened. Hamas opposes Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, which has caused major frictions with Iran. Hamas has drawn closer to Turkey in recent years, which also irritates Iran. This is important because it means Iran cannot dictate to Hamas and Hamas must not be viewed as an Iranian puppy dog.
Hezbollah: For years, the Lebanese Hezbollah has said that in the next confrontation with Israel it would rain down its new and longer-range missiles on Haifa and Tel Aviv. It has done no such thing. In two months of warfare it has only fought a token war, firing missiles every day into Israel, but never more than few miles across the border. The Lebanese public, overwhelmed by economic disaster, and other Lebanese political parties have made clear to Hezbollah that if it drags Lebanon into a real war, it will likely mean the end of Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ): PIJ is for all purposes a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pasdaran. Iran is believed to be its only major financial supporter. PIJ has now allied itself closely with Hamas. It holds some of the hostages seized October 7 and it regularly fires rockets into Israel, just as Hamas does.
The West Bank Palestinians: Hamas has called on the Palestinians on the West Bank to rise up in revolt so as to draw the Israeli military away from Gaza. There have been a number of street marches and protests against Israel, but nothing on the scale sought by Hamas. There have also been almost daily sniper attacks and ambushes on Israeli troops in the West Bank. But again, they have not been on a scale to stop Israel from concentrating on Gaza.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria: These groups vary from wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Pasdaran to independent, ideological allies of the Islamic Republic. Some of them have been attacking US bases in Iraq and Syria on a daily basis since mid-October. But they are generally using small drones with little explosive punch. Thus, they are demonstrating support for Hamas, but not on a scale to do any severe damage to the US and none to Israel. Furthermore, many Iraqi politicos have called for the US Embassy in Baghdad to be overrun. But despite years of protests outside the US Embassy, there has not been even a single one since Israel attacked Gaza.
The Houthis: These Yemeni rebels have been firing ballistic missiles at Israel. Most have been shot down by the US or Israel and do not appear to have done any damage. Many speculate the Houthis chose to get involved mainly to polish their radical credentials. While many news agencies call the Houthis agents of Iran, they are actually a tribal element that has existed in Yemen since before there was an Islamic Republic in Iran. They have aligned with Iran mainly to benefit from Iranian weapons supplies.
The West: No Western government has supported Hamas, but many have been sharply critical of Israel for its harsh military drive into Gaza. Liberal groups, and especially younger people, in many, if not most, Western states have turned sharply against Israel. This follows the rule of supporting the plucky David against the bully Goliath. Seven decades ago, the West overwhelmingly backed Israel when it was attacked by Egypt in 1956 and by a group of Arab states in 1967. Israel was uniformly seen as a tiny state holding out miraculously against much larger states trying to bully it. Now, all that has changed. The world sees Israel as a substantial military power, with nuclear weapons to boot. Hamas is just an impoverished enclave jampacked with poor people being trampled down by rich and powerful Israel. So, Western liberals still give their support to plucky little guys but the little guys are different now.
The Islamic Republic: Tehran has been participating with little more than words but lots of them. Every day some official declares Hamas to be the military victor in the war and Israel to be finished as a national state. Even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi told a group of athletes that Israel has been “knocked out” by Hamas. Mohsen Rezai, onetime commander of the Pasdaran and current vice president for economic affairs, has said the deeper the Israelis drive into Gaza, the sooner they will “sink into the quagmire and will not be able to achieve victory.”
The one thing that has changed in Iran is its rhetoric. For years, Iran has said that Israel and Jews run the United States and bend the Americans to their will. Now, it says the exact opposite. It says the United States controls Israel and forces it to do whatever Washington wants. For example, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of the Pasdaran, says the Americans have prevented Israel from agreeing to a ceasefire although the United States was actually pressing a reluctant Israel to accept a temporary ceasefire or pause in the fighting. It is not clear why Iran has now totally reversed its portrayal of US-Israeli relations.
Tehran’s primary objective appears to be to damage Israel and to cancel the Abraham Accords signed by Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco and others normalizing relations with Israel. The mullahs were deeply dismayed when the Arab Summit in Riyadh on November 11, although condemning “Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, war crimes and barbaric and inhumane massacres by the occupation government,” nevertheless reiterated that they intended to pursue reconciliation with Israel after the war in Gaza ends.
There seems to be some internal dissension within Iran about its over-the-top rhetoric. After demanding repeatedly that the Arabs break all relations with Israel, Khamenehi in a speech November 19 said the Arabs must at least cut relations for “for a limited time.”
Iran clearly wants to stir the cauldron of trouble in the Middle East but does not want any of that to splash on the Islamic Republic. Some see this as a policy of fighting Israel to the last Palestinian. Few analysts believe the Islamic Republic advocates for Palestine as a matter of principle, but rather surmise it has adopted the Palestinian issue as a means to drive its goal to be the leader of the Islamic world. It sees Muslims the world over as sympathetic to the Palestinians, while governments across the Islamic world actually do little anymore to support Palestinians. By thumping for Palestine, the Islamic Republic has seen that it garners more support from the masses across the Islamic world. But it does not want to tweak the tail of the US or Israel to the point where they take military action against Iran.
This leaves the Islamic Republic to take contorted stands. For example, Qods Force Commander Maj. Gen. Esmail Qaani has said Iran will not let Israel defeat Hamas. But he avoids saying under what conditions Iran might enter the war. Instead, he and all other Iranian officials say Hamas is winning; in other words, there is no need for Iran’s involvement.
In a speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, President Raisi laid out a series of points he said the OIC should insist upon. The major points included a demand that Muslim countries cease all oil sales to Israel. Israel gets 60 percent of its oil from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Neither country has halted or reduced its oil sales to Israel and the OIC totally ignored this point. Raisi also called for Muslim countries to break relations with Israel. The OIC also ignored that point. In fact, the OIC basically ignored everything Raisi called for it to do apart from calling for a ceasefire, which shows where the Islamic Republic stands with its fellow Muslim-majority states.
Raisi also called for an end to all trade with Israel and a severing of diplomatic relations. He called for a reconstruction fund to be set up to pay for rebuilding Gaza. He demanded the creation of an international court to “prosecute and punish the Zionist and American criminal leaders.” And he insisted the Islamic world send a convoy of ships with humanitarian aid to Gaza, which lacks a port capable of receiving such ships. He said a ceasefire to end the killing was the first priority. And the OIC acknowledged only his last point.
Many people around the world think that Iran wants to see the Gaza crisis boil over into a big war involving Israel fighting the entire Muslim world. But few specialists believe that. Iran wants the Muslim world’s hatred to be focused on Israel (not Iran), but it does not want a big war because that would likely engulf Iran.
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a former Majlis speaker (whose daughter is married to the Supreme Leader’s son), tells Iranians they should look at the big picture. “The Zionist entity wants to turn Gaza into a war between Iran and the US. We must tell people who want Iran to enter the war in Gaza that this may be exactly what the Zionist entity wants, because, if that happens, the one who takes advantage of the war in Gaza will be Israel.”
There are people who want the war to expand and engulf Iran. US Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is leading a band of GOP senators who have introduced a resolution (non-binding) that would authorize the US military to strike Iran if the Gaza violence spills over farther in the region.
“If the war expands, if Hezbollah opens up a second front in the north against Israel in a substantial way to overwhelm the Iron Dome [Israeli missile defense system], then we should hit the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Graham said early in November.
The only other major player interested in a broader war is probably Hamas, which has been calling on Arabs to rise up against Israel with a starling lack of response. The only real question is whether the Arab leaders want Israel to smash Hamas and reduce the Palestinian movement to ashes. That doesn’t mean they want to kill the idea of a two-state solution; rather they dislike Hamas because it opposes a two-state solution and because it comes out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that no Arab government supports and which many have expunged in their countries by killing off Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
Hamas frightens most of the Arab world leadership. Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas senior leadership, told The New York Times, “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table. And now no one in the region is experiencing calm.” Taher an-Nounou, a Hamas media official, told the newspaper, “I hope the state of war will become permanent on all borders and that the Arab world will stand with us.”
Much of Iran’s rhetoric has gotten out of hand. For example, President Raisi told Norway’s prime minister in a telephone conversation, “Hamas is the legal, elected and legitimate government of Gaza. The war against Hamas is a war against democracy.” The last election in Gaza was in January 2006, almost 18 years ago.
Many of the threats made are beyond hollow, even laughable. The Islamic Republic said it would order its affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria to attack US positions in those countries if the United States refroze the $6 billion it had just unfrozen. The US refroze the funds. The militias started attacking the Americans in Iraq and Syria on a daily basis. The Islamic Republic proclaimed on almost a daily basis that it doesn’t give orders to those militias and they decide their policies on their own.
The Lebanese Hezbollah said it would enter the war only if Israel launched a ground attack on Gaza. The Israelis launched a ground attack. Hezbollah did nothing beyond the desultory shelling of far northern Israel that it had been doing before the invasion of Gaza.
The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Pasdaran, has reported as fact that 5,000 American troops invaded Gaza along with Israeli ground forces. It is the only news agency the Iran Times has seen anywhere in the world saying that. Not even Hamas claims there are American troops in Gaza.
Much of Iran’s rhetoric is self-protective. For example, while officials spew out words of love and support for Hamas, Pasdar deputy commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi has proclaimed that Iran no longer provides any weapons to Hamas. He says the group is now self-reliant and can build all its own weapons. Iranian officials constantly make the point that their hearts are with Hamas but not their weapons or money. They clearly are fearful that Israel or Washington will conclude that the Islamic Republic must be assaulted militarily to stop Hamas from functioning.
The Islamic Republic, meanwhile, is leaning on the Jewish community in Iran to break ties with Israel and with their relatives living in Israel. Under pressure from the regime, many, if not most, synagogues in Iran’s 9,000-person Jewish community have held ceremonies to express support for Hamas, which started the ongoing war by an attack on Jewish communities near Gaza that killed 1,200 people. Hamas also kidnapped 240 people it is holding hostage. At least one of the dead and one of the hostages are Iranian-born.
The Islamic Republic constantly describes Israel’s attack on Gaza as a genocide and there have been repeated calls for the world to condemn the genocide of the Gazans. Genocide is an effort to kill all of the members of a defined community. There are two million Gazans. By the count of the Hamas medical authorities, after two months, Israel has killed 13,000 Gazans.
Iran has simply ignored the fact that the crisis began with Hamas attacking villages within a few miles of the Gaza fence and killing men, women and children indiscriminately, a total of about 1,200 people. Israel has said that mass killing spree justifies its response by invading Gaza. The Biden Administration has adopted that same logic.
But UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “There is a basic principle for me, and that is that Hamas is not the Palestinian people. You need to be able to distinguish Hamas from the Palestinian people. And so, you cannot use the horrific things that Hamas did as a reason for collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, “One horror does not justify another.”