Arutz Sheva News
written by Elad Benari
Monday March 16, 2015
In a recent television interview translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar defended his group’s ties with Iran.
"We have maintained that countries that believe in our ideology and can help us - countries like Iran that believe we are capable of liberating Palestine... These are the countries with which we must develop relations," Al-Zahar said in the interview on the Lebanese Palestine Today TV, which originally aired in February.
“We did not join the PLO when it acted against Jordan in 1970, and we did not join its wars in Beirut and against Hafez Al-Assad. We did not join the PLO when it supported one Arab country that occupied another Arab country. To this day, we have never intervened in the internal Arab conflicts, even in countries where we lived, like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, or elsewhere. We have kept our force directed at the Israeli enemy,” he said.
Iran was once a stronger supporter of Hamas, but the two had been at odds in recent years over the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. As a result of Hamas’ refusal to support Assad in the uprising, an angry Iran at one point stopped supplying the terror group with weapons.
Nevertheless, the two sides have been getting closer in recent months as Tehran has been clandestinely supplying Hamas with arms and financial support. The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, recently boasted that Iran provided Hamas with the technology it has used to rain down rockets on Israel from Gaza, and Hamas later thanked Iran for providing the group with the rockets.
The Al-Hayat newspaper recently revealed that Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Mashaal met with Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Solemeini, in Turkey, just days after the end of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza over the summer.
Arutz Sheva News
written by Elad Benari and AFP
July 25, 2014
Iran provided the Hamas terrorist group with the technology it has used to rain down rockets on Israel from Gaza, its parliament speaker boasted on Thursday.
Tehran frequently boasts of the financial and material support it gives to Hamas and Islamic Jihad but more rarely talks of its military assistance, noted AFP.
"Today, the fighters in Gaza have good capabilities and can meet their own needs for weapons," speaker Ali Larijani was quoted as having told the Arabic service of state television.
"But once upon a time, they needed the arms manufacture know-how and we gave it to them," he said.
During the last major conflict in and around Gaza in November 2012, Larijani said Iran was "proud" to have provided "both financial and military support" to Hamas.
Israel accused Iran of supplying Gaza militants with its Fajr-5 missile, which has a range of 75 kilometers (45 miles), for use during that conflict.
Hamas fired several such missiles at Tel Aviv and even Jerusalem in 2012, all of which exploded in open areas and did not cause any physical injuries or damages.
The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, claimed at the time that it was not the missiles that had been supplied but their technology.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on the Palestinian Arabs on Wednesday to keep fighting Israel and to expand their resistance from Gaza to Judea and Samaria.
Qatar is providing a safe-harbor to all of the world's Islamist terrorist leaders. And don't you find it funny that Saudi Arabia and Qatar claim to HATE Iran, yet THEY ALL financially support and supply weapons to the SAME Islamist terrorist groups around the world. You need to stop and think about this shell game here and incredible deceit perpetrated by these Islamist totalitarian regimes. (emphasis mine)The Daily Star, Lebanon
Qatar denies it plans to expel Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal
written by AP staff
January 12, 2015
DOHA: Qatar's top diplomat is denying an Israeli claim that the Gulf nation will expel a leader of the Hamas militant group.
Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah dismissed as "just rumors" suggestions Hamas political bureau head Khaled Meshaal is leaving his country for Turkey.
He was responding to a question during a news conference Monday with his visiting Venezuelan counterpart, Delcy Rodriguez.
An Israeli official last week said his government had received word from "official channels" that Qatar had ordered Meshaal's expulsion. Hamas officials denied the claim at the time.
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