The Washington Post ( WP ), an American daily, reported on the 9th (local time) that Hamas, a Palestinian armed political faction that launched a large-scale attack on Israel, had been preparing for it for at least a year and received support from Iran, which is hostile to Israel, with weapons and military training.
Citing current and former intelligence agency officials from the West and the Middle East, the media reported that Iran provided technical assistance in manufacturing more than 4,000 rockets and drones that Hamas has been sending to Israel since the 7th.
Additionally, some Hamas members received advanced military tactics from technical advisors of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah at training camps in Lebanon.
Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamic militant faction in Lebanon that receives support from Iran.
The U.S. government’s official position is that while Iran has broadly supported Hamas, there is still no evidence that it was directly linked to the attacks that began on the 7th.
In fact, it is unclear exactly what role Iran played in this Hamas attack on Israel.
However, current and former intelligence officials explained that this attack showed features of support from Iran and was extremely difficult for Hamas to carry out on its own without significant help from outside.
A Western intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and a Western analyst with access to sensitive information, told the outlet that analysis conducted after the attack showed Hamas’ preparations likely began at least mid-2022.
On the 7th, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip and infiltrated southern Israel, killing hundreds of civilians.
About a dozen intelligence analysts and military experts interviewed by WP expressed surprise at the precision and stealth of Hamas’ cross-border attacks on land, sea, and air. Mark Polymeropoulos, a former senior member of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Middle East counterterrorism operation, said that given the complexity of the attack and the vast scale of training, logistics, communications, personnel and weapons it would have required, “Iranian
intervention and “It suggests there was a massive intelligence failure,” he said.
He specifically pointed out that the attack using paragliders was “clearly at a level that would have required training outside the Gaza Strip.”
Michael Knights, a Hezbollah expert, also analyzed that Hamas’ high-ranking officials may have received training from Hezbollah and spread it to other members of the organization in the Gaza Strip, and that this attack, which used a variety of weapons and tactics, was “clearly trained and carefully planned somewhere.” I did.
While Hezbollah is completely dependent on the Shiite Islamic state of Iran, the Sunni Hamas has traditionally maintained a degree of independence from Iran.
However, in recent years, officials said that they had received a large amount of Iranian funds, and received technical help in manufacturing rockets and토토사이트 drones equipped with advanced guidance systems, in addition to military tactical training inside and outside the Gaza Strip.
Iran has also publicly stated that it has provided significant military support to Hamas.
Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas’ leadership, acknowledged in an interview last year that Hamas received $70 million (about 94.5 billion won) in military aid from Iran.
Additionally, according to a 2020 U.S. State Department report, Iran provides $100 million (approximately 135 billion won) annually to Palestinian armed organizations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian People’s Liberation Front.
According to military analysts and weapons experts, while the rockets and missiles flown by Hamas may be homegrown, there is a clear Iranian ‘lineage’ to them.
The rockets first manufactured and flown by Hamas during the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising against Israel) in 2001 were crude, using homemade fuel, but it is said that Iran helped Hamas strengthen its rocket capabilities over the years.
In fact, the blueprints for some of the rockets produced by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have Iranian Persian terms written on them, explained Michael Eisenstadt of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a U.S. think tank.
He pointed out that the tactics used this time are consistent with Iran’s operational concept of launching attacks every few months or years to demoralize Israel and weaken its resilience.
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