In 2017, Iran saw an opportunity.
Relations with Hamas had been strained for years, after the Gaza-based terror group backed the Sunni opposition to the Bashar al-Assad regime that Tehran was propping up in Syria.
Then, six years into the bloody civil war, Hamas selected two new chiefs seen as friendly toward Iran — Ismail Haniyeh as the movement’s overall leader based in Qatar, and Yahya Sinwar, the powerful new chief in Gaza.
With the new leadership in place, Iran engineered a reconciliation between Assad and Hamas, firming up the ring of armed proxies it had built around Israel.
Tehran, said Sinwar, is Hamas’s “largest backer financially and militarily.”
“All the missiles you might see in Gaza and Lebanon were created with Iran’s support,” boasted the Aerospace Force commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
