When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the 1979 Islamic Revolution, among his first acts was to embrace the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He invited PLO chief Yasser Arafat to Tehran, where his government feted the terrorist leader, gifting to him the building that Israel had until then used as a de facto embassy. Arafat declared Iran to be his “second home.” There certainly was a meeting of minds between Khomeini and Arafat. On September 8, 1982, Khomeini issued a decree calling on all the Muslims of the world to “conquer Qods [Jerusalem]” and to “wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.”
Khomeini’s “Voice of the Islamic Revolution” radio depicted Arafat as central to revolutionary interests. “The Iranian revolution can be safeguarded only if we remember to send assistance to freedom fighters all over the world,” it said. “Certainly, in sending men to fight side-by-side with the fighters on Islamic fronts, the PLO will hold a special position.”
That relationship would last nearly a decade until, in 1988, Arafat began to negotiate with Israel. There followed the Oslo Accords. By the time Arafat died in 2004, Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, openly vilified Arafat as “a traitor and a fool.”
Shi’ism was only one pillar of Iran’s Islamic Revolution; the leftism that dominated Iranian intellectual circles was another. By 1998, Khamenei apparently concluded that the PLO’s leftist nationalism had run its course. It could no longer rely on Fatah, the PLO’s largest faction, to push Tehran’s agenda. If the Iranian regime was to make good on its goal to destroy Israel, Islamists would need to recast their narrative as a religious struggle. From then on, Khamenei and other Islamists would emphasize that, contrary to the claims of Arafat and the Arabs, the Palestinian issue was not just a Palestinian issue, but also the “issue of the Islamic world.” Such formulation was meant to avoid limiting the Palestinian issue about a single nationality or ethnicity.
Khamenei elaborated in his December 31, 1999 Friday prayers sermon. “Since my presidency [1981-89], I had this running argument with some Arab countries. I raised a point [about Israel’s rejection], but their governments said that they were not more Palestinian than the Palestinians! And they would go on to say that whatever the Palestinians wanted must be done.”
For the Islamic Republic, Hamas then became the perfect anecdote. The group fulfilled an Iranian need. Born of the Muslim Brotherhood, it embraced a similar apocalyptic vision to the Islamic Republic, sectarian differences notwithstanding. Its charter stated its goal to be Israel’s elimination, not simply for Palestinian or Arab nationalist reasons, but for Islam itself. As the charter explained, “It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
Only three years after Arafat’s death, Hamas had become so powerful that it drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ victory, with Tehran’s encouragement, cemented the Islamist apocalyptic approach to Israel across the Islamic world.
The Iranian bet on Hamas continues. While Hamas directed its October 7, 2023 terror attacks at Jews, empowering themselves in the eyes of West Bank Palestinians was an added motivation, especially as Palestinians maneuver to succeed the 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli government is correct to demand the complete excision of Hamas from Gaza. The group shares an ideological bond with Iranian Islamists and marches in lockstep with them. Policymakers may debate whether Hamas is a full proxy, but this misses the point. Tehran does not need to command Hamas because the Iranian regime knows Hamas shares its goals.
The cold war between Iran and the Arabs extends back decades, if not centuries. The Hamas-Fatah feud is not simply the result of an intra-Palestinian political dispute, but rather represents the Iran-Arab cold war on Palestinian turf. While many Arabs wanted to put the conflict with Israel to rest, Iran’s Islamists will continue to fight the Jewish state to the last Palestinian. Hamas is simply their latest agent.
