Hamas War With Israel Deals Another Blow To Iran’s Economy

Following separate phone talks Sunday with the Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh, Raisi issued a statement in which he said the Islamic Republic supports the “Palestinian nation’s lawful defense”. 

Raisi accused Israel and its supporters of responsibility for “jeopardizing the security of regional nations”, for which he said Israel should be held accountable. 

“Iran invites the whole world to observe the fact that the accumulation of oppression and injustice towards the oppressed Palestinian nation, the continuation of insult to women and prisoners, and the desecration of al-Quds and the first ‘Qibla’ of Muslims, will not last forever and are certain to face the resistance of nations,” he said. 

Raisi chose his words apparently to deflect widespread international outrage at the wanton killing of Israeli civilians by the invading gunmen, who also kidnapped dozens of women and children.

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesman, told the BBC Sunday that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran.

In an earlier statement, Major General Mohammad-Bagheri (Baqeri), Chief of Iranian Armed Forces Staff, had also called the surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, dubbed Al-Aqsa Storm, as a “glorious victory” and said these operations proved that “desperate attempts such as the ridiculous normalization process” would not be able to slow down or prevent Israel’s annihilation. 

“Once the stone Intifada (uprising) was the Palestinian nation’s only defense tool, but today Palestinian fighters have reached a level of capability that enables them to deal strong blows to the Zionist enemy in a complex operation and make a mockery of its air defense systems and Iron Dome by firing thousands of rockets and missiles as part of a complex combined operation,” Bagheri said. 

Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) in a tweet Sunday also called the terror invasion “decisive, unique and successful” and a “real example of legitimate defense against a criminal regime”. 

The Islamic Republic’s propaganda apparatus organized street celebrations for “Palestinian victory” in Tehran and other cities Saturday evening but sources in Iran say participants were pro-regime and Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) supporters and their families. Ordinary Iranians kept away from such celebrations; they maintained. 

Footage and photos released by state media and pro-regime social media users also strongly suggest that these “celebrations”, even in large cities, were small and hastily organized propaganda events that failed to attract ordinary people who in the past decade have often protested to the regime’s massive expenditures to support its militant allies. Protesters have often chanted slogans such as “Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon. I will only sacrifice my life for Iran”. 

A video posted with the caption “Remarkable presence of Esfahan residents in the celebration of Palestine’s victory over Zionist occupiers” shows only dozens of people gathered around a pick-up truck chanting slogans against Israel. 

A photo published on X presumably showing “celebrations and happiness of people”, in Gilan-e Gharb, a town of 22,000 in western Iran actually shows a small group of men -- including a cleric, a soldier and others who look like government officials – standing in a line and holding posters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Qassem Soleimani and the founder of the Islamic Republic Ruhollah Khomeini. 

A source in the southwestern city of Ahvaz told Iran International that the IRGC had held celebrations at the main squares of the city. “It was a sad and disconcerting situation,” he said, adding that ordinary people would not join the Revolutionary Guards’ celebrations and passed by ignoring them. 

“There were no celebrations in Ekbatan. There were only a couple of places in Tehran where the suppressive Basiji [militias] celebrated,” a resident of Tehran’s defiant Ekbatan neighborhood told Iran International. 

The death toll from the Hamas attacks, the most violent since the Yom Kippur (Ramadhan) War in 1973, has reportedly killed at least 600 people in Israel since Saturday. 

In Gaza, the death toll of civilians in retaliatory Israeli attacks has risen to more than 370. Israeli military says it has also killed 400 Palestinian militants and arrested dozens. 

World leaders including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres have condemned the attack. Guterres said he was "appalled” by reports of attacks on Israeli civilians and their abduction from their homes. 

In an exclusive report on Sunday, the WSJ quoted senior unnamed Hamas and Hezbollah members, who said Iranian officials were involved in planning the large-scale operation and the final decision to launch the operation was made in Beirut October 2.

The Iranian regime has not shied away from signaling its involvement and support to Hamas, which is largely financed and armed by Tehran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and a host of other officials and the state media have widely expressed their satisfaction with the attack.

The fact that senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials spoke about Iran’s direct involvement could be sign of Tehran’s eagerness to show its reach as Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of establishing diplomatic relations. Iran had warned against any normalization with Israel.

Despite the Iranian regime’s open endorsement of the attack and its long-standing material support for Hamas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday stated that the United States does not have any evidence of Tehran’s direct involvement.

The Biden administration has come under heavy criticism for continuing diplomatic contacts with the Islamic Republic and agreeing to release $8.7 billion in blocked Iranian funds since June. Critics say that any financial means put at the disposal of the regime will enable it to finance terrorism in the region and the world.

Hamas fighters rampaged through Israeli towns as the country suffered its bloodiest day in decades on Saturday. Israel battered Gaza with airstrikes on Sunday, inflicting many casualties. Many voiced concern that the spiraling violence can lead to a major new war in the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the military deployment on Saturday, adding that the US will be rapidly providing the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions, and that its security assistance will begin moving on Sunday and arriving in the coming days.

“I have directed the movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. This includes the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), as well as the Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Carney (DDG 64), and USS Roosevelt (DDG 80). We have also taken steps to augment U.S. Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region,” Austin said.

“Over the coming days the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism,” he said Sunday.

General Michael Kurilla, the Commander of the US Central Command said in a statement, "USCENTCOM stands firmly with our Israeli and regional partners to address the risks of any party seeking to expand the conflict."

US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that additional assistance for the Israeli Defense Forces was on its way and more would follow in the coming days, the White House said after their call.

"It wouldn't be a surprise that part of the motivation may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together, along with other countries that may be interested in normalizing relations with Israel," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN earlier on Sunday.

Blinken also said that there was not yet any evidence seen by the United States of Iran being behind the attack, but he noted the long-standing ties between Iran and Hamas. Blinken's statement contradicts years of evidence which has proven that Iran pays Hamas around $100m annually, as was announced in 2018 by the then Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, under the Donald Trump administration.

In spite of evidence to suggest the Saturday morning attack which began with a barrage of thousands of rockets fired into Israel's southern region, followed by a land, sea and air invasion of troops, was carefully planned, Blinken tried to suggest the attacks could have been more of an operation orchestrated by militants in Gaza and the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

US Deputy National Security adviser Jon Finer told Fox News Sunday that Saudi-Israel normalization efforts should continue despite the latest attack. "We think it would be in both countries' interests to continue to pursue this possibility," he said.

The attack by Hamas launched at dawn on Saturday is the biggest and deadliest incursion into Israel since Egypt and Syria launched a sudden assault in an effort to reclaim lost territory in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.

With reporting by Reuters

Musk, speaking out on Sunday after the large-scale terrorist invasion of Israel that has killed more than 700 Israelis, said, “Khamenei’s official position is clear that the eradication of Israel is the actual goal, not just supporting Palestinians,” and added, “That will never happen.”

Khamenei who has multiple accounts on X (formerly Twitter) uses the platform to spread hateful speech. Activists have been long urging both Twitter’s former management and later Elon Musk to ban Khamenei from the platform. However. Khamenei was again to publish a post after the attack on Israel, although a note below the post said it “violated the X Rules,” but the company “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Post to remain accessible.”

Musk addressed Islamic Republic’s ruler, saying, “Stoking the fires of hatred isn’t working. Perhaps it is time to consider something else.”

Khamenei and many other Iranian officials over the years have called for the destruction of Israel and for decades have financed and armed militant and terrorist groups in Lebanon, Palestinian territories and other regional countries.

The Iranian regime has congratulated Hamas for its terror attack, while hundreds of Israelis including women and children have been kidnapped and taken to Gaza under inhumane conditions.

In the wake of the attack, experts have scrambled to account for the failure in Israeli intelligence. The answer seems to be hiding in plain sight: the IDF and intelligence is overtaxed and overworked. Hamas’ patron, Iran, has escalated its anti-Israeli intelligence and sabotage plots over the past seven months to an unprecedented scale. Indeed, on September 11, 2023, Israel’s intelligence chief announced their success in thwarting twenty-seven attacks planned by Iran against Israeli citizens and Jews around the world. He further warned Iran that should the attacks persist, Israel would retaliate directly against the main culprits of the attacks in Tehran.

The escalation in planned attacks over the past seven months correspond to the amount of time roughly needed to plan the 7/10 invasion. Whether these planned attacks were meant to distract Israeli forces is unknown. However, thwarting twenty-seven attacks certainly drained a lot of intelligence resources.

Now, on the second day after the attack, Biden administration officials announced on CNN that Iran was directly involved in Hamas’ ruthless mass carnage in Israel.

Asymmetrical surprise attacks on Israel are not unprecedented. Palestinians had previously infiltrated Israel with gliders once before in November 1987, and no doubt Hamas leaders used “the Night of the Gliders” as a template. Israel swiftly launched retaliatory attacks and an incursion of a magnificent scale is only days away.

Since its founding in 1979, the Tehran regime has made no friends but rogue actors (Syria and Libya) in the region. It has vowed to destroy Israel as an article of faith and export its revolution to other Arab states.

Hatred for Israel is quintessential to the regime’s fanatical character, even more than its disgust for the region’s Arab states. The Mullahs in Tehran have acted as patrons to the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian militants (Islamic Jihad and Hamas) by supplying them with missiles to attack Israel over the past twenty years, prompting Israel to oblige in kind.

Avowing Israel’s destruction, the Iranian regime has also sought to gain all the needed material for possible nuclear weapons production. Israel has bludgeoned the Iranian nuclear program with debilitating attacks deep inside Iran, as well as surgical strikes against Hezbollah and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Corps (IRGC) in Syria. Waging a proxy war with Saudi Arabia and UAE in Yemen since 2015, the Iranian regime cut ties with the Saudis over regional differences during the same period, only to renew relations in March 2023 with China’s mediation.

Tehran greeted the rapprochement of the Israel-Persian Gulf Arab states and the Abraham Accords with loathing, and finds the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement equally appalling for it could herald the establishment of the Peninsular Shield Force against Iran. As the Saudis conditioned their rapprochement with Israel on Israeli concessions to the Palestinian authority, the rapprochement would elevate the Palestinian Authority’s position eclipsing Hamas to the point of irrelevance.

Wary of the Saudi Israeli rapprochement, Hamas leaders increased their overt and covert visits to Tehran. One can only speculate what sabotage and terror operations did they concoct during these visits. Then, only four days before the attack, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei exclaimed Iran’s animosity towards the Saudi Israeli rapprochement: “The definite position of the Islamic Republic is that countries that make the gamble of normalisation with Israel will lose. They are betting on a losing horse.” Only with the benefit of hindsight can we now decipher Khamenei’s words as a prayer to derail Saudi Israeli rapprochement, signalling the Hamas 7/10 attack.

From the early hours of the conflict, many observers have been quick to blame the 7/10 intelligence failure on Israel’s domestic strife over the government’s proposed judicial reforms. Some cite as evidence the letter by several ex-government security advisors to the speaker of the Knesset who warned “the lack of agreement (over judicial reforms) could undermine Israel’s security, as “the national resilience of Israeli society” has enabled the country to tackle external threats.”

However, Israel has been unrelenting in its deterrence operations.Israel’s “intelligence failure” could be equally ascribed to “alert and constant readiness fatigue” as they ever more vigorously implemented the Israeli deterrence doctrine. But to attribute the “intelligence failure” to domestic Israeli peaceful protests over the judicial reforms grossly underestimates the undisputed track record of the Israeli intelligence and security services and the IDF. After all, Israel has been ruled by right-wing coalition governments over the past twenty years along a consistent national security doctrine.

As Israel continues to wage its deterrence war against Iran, the burden of its task has overwhelmed its resources. The last word on the intelligence failure must be left to the aegis of Israeli parliamentary democracy, military, and security echelons as Israel persists as determined as ever.