IRAN reportedly helped Hamas terrorists plot their surprise attack on Israel over several weeks.
It comes as the death toll hit the grim milestone of more than 1,000.
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Hamas insiders said that top officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked on the plans since August – and gave the go-ahead at a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday.
Militants from Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia that runs much of Lebanon and has often clashed with Israel, also said Iran helped plot the slaughter.
Revolutionary Guard leader Ismail Qaani reportedly led the meetings, which were attended by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas’s Saleh al-Arouri.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also sat in on two of the fortnightly meetings in Beirut.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini praised the attacks on Twitter on Sunday.
He said: “God willing, the cancer of the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region.”
Khameini accompanied his tweet with a clip of terrified civilians fleeing a music festival where Hamas killed 260 people.
But Hamas boss Mahmoud Mirdawi told the Wall Street Journal that the Palestinian group had planned the attacks by itself.
He said: “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision.”
It comes as…
- Hamas terrorists launched an all-out attack on Israel from land, air and sea with 5,000 rockets fired
- Up to 700 Israelis are confirmed dead as thousands more have been taken to hospital
- The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 378 people had died in the violence that followed the surprise Hamas attack on Israel
- Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Gaza will be “reduced to rubble”
- Reports emerged of kidnapped Israeli soldiers being paraded on military vehicles
- British citizen Jake Marlowe has been reported missing after attending a music festival in southern Israel
- Netanyahu mobilised the country’s army reserves following his declaration of war
- The attack has been dubbed “Israel’s 9/11” after an “embarrassing intelligence failure”
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi spoke to Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah on Sunday.
MPs in the Iranian capital Tehran broke out in chants of ‘Death to Israel’ after news of the Hamas attack broke.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan 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 Hamas and Hezbollah insiders said the attacks were aimed at disrupting US-brokered talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia to establish normal diplomatic relations.
Iran has for many years tried to build influence in the countries around Israel by funneling cash and weapons to the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria’s Assad regime.
Harry Goodwin
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