In a show of just how close Iran’s military, philosophical, and financial support for Hamas is, on Friday, ”Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed [today] to keep supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas until the “collapse of Israel.”


Iran’s record of providing support to Hamas to help it carry out terrorist attacks against Israel has been longstanding.

Earlier this spring, Iran promised Hamas advanced missiles, weapons systems, and financial support when the terrorist group’s head Khaled Meshaal went to Tehran to meet with Ahmedinejad.

The New York Times reported last August that:

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

On March 9, 2008, the The Sunday Times reported that a senior Hamas commander boasted that 300 of the organization’s “best brains” were secretly sent to Iran for military training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:

“Iran is our mother,” the commander said. “She gives us information, military supplies and financial support.”

The Sunday Times report said that since 2005, at least seven (7) separate groups of Hamas fighters trained with Iranian instructors so that they could be snipers, make explosives out of everday items, and make deadlier rockets to use in terrorist attacks against Israel.

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas terrorist group’s figurehead, has fled Syria for Sudan, according to a report from Galei Tzahal, the Israeli Army Radio.

It cited a report in Kuwait’s al Rai newspaper alleging that peace negotiations between Israel and Syria forced Meshal to leave Syria for Sudan.


al Rai suggested that the the assassinations in Syria of Imad Mughniyah in February, Hezbollah’s top military commander, and Syrian Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman early last month, may also have been related to changes in Damascus.

In a classic example of quid pro quo, Hamas reportedly snags at least $20 million each month from smuggling operations running into and out of the Gaza Strip.


According to a report in Haaretz by Avi Issacharoff, Hamas is even said to be trying to “place the smuggling operation between Egyptian and Palestinian Rafah on an official footing” by having special oil pipeline tunnels set up to get fuel in from Egypt.

Arab sources say that Hamas’ civil defense chief Yousef al-Zahar and Rafah Mayor Issa al-Nashar were at a “conference organized by a Gazan human rights group under the banner: ‘The tunnels – advantages and disadvantages.’”

al-Zahar and al-Nashar were said to have “praised the tunnels as important conduits for weapons for the “resistance,” [i.e., Hamas terrorist operations and those by other Palestinian terrorist groups inside Gaza] but also pointed to the dangers inherent in their operation.”

A new report says that Hamas rejected a joint Egyptian and Jordanian proposal to send Arab troops to Gaza to train Palestinian police forces.


Not surprisingly, Hamas immediately rejected the proposal, according to the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh.

Why? It seems that such a plan would have involved some oversight into of weapons in Gaza, as well as efforts to prevent Hamas’ ongoing smuggling of arms, anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, missiles, and other contraband from Egypt into Gaza.

Here is a diagram showing how weapons smuggling operations operate from Rafah inside Egypt to Gaza. The diagram depicts how Israel had maintained a security corridor between Egypt and Gaza before ceding control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority several years ago.

Diagram: Israel News Agency