Important Article on the Iran-Hamas Divide

Article by Muhammad Sahimi

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the U.S. far right and supporters of Israel pointed to Iran as the main behind-the-scenes culprit, hoping that their message would spur a military attack on Iran.

It is well known that the Islamic Republic has supported Hamas for decades, but Hamas is not a puppet of Iran. During the civil war in Syria, Hamas supported the armed opposition, angering both Iran’s leadership and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. And in the current war, Hamas appears to be angry that Iran and its allies have not provided it with direct assistance or intervened on its behalf.

Tehran’s leadership, as well as that of the Lebanese Hezbollah, was as surprised as anyone when the attacks took place, with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, asserting in a speech that his group was not given advance notice about Hamas’ plans. So did Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who flatly denied that Iran had participated in planning or executing the attacks, or had advance notice. U.S. and Israeli officials also stated that there is no evidence that Iran participated directly in planning the attacks.

Khamenei has also stated that Iran will not enter the war on behalf of Hamas. In his recent meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, Khamenei reportedly criticized Hamas for attacking Israel, calling it a strategic mistake that resulted in the redeployment of a large U.S. force to the Middle East and threw Washington’s full support behind Israel.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict began 30 years before the Islamic Revolution in Iran and will continue indefinitely even if the Islamic Republic disappears tomorrow, so long as Palestinians are denied their own independent state. At the same time, the fact is that Iran’s internal political dynamics are complex, and various political factions are not unified about Iran’s policy toward the Middle East, in general, and the Palestinians and Israel and the current war, in particular. There are deep fissures within Iran when it comes to debating foreign policy, particularly Middle East policy.

To begin with, all Iranian political factions agree on, (1) forcing the U.S. military to leave the Middle East; (2) raising the costs of the “maximum pressure” policy that began with the Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration; (3) the importance of having a strong deterrent against possible military attacks by the U.S. and/or Israel, and (4) supporting the rights of the Palestinian people.

But there is no agreement on how to put such policies into effect. The hardliners believe that to punish the U.S. for its “maximum pressure” policy and force its military to leave the Middle East, the best approach is to forge alliances with China, Russia and other nations that oppose the U.S. interventions around the world and to create problems for the U.S. in the region. Moderates and pragmatists, on the other hand, advocate close relations with Iran’s neighbors and the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf, as well as with Europe, to reduce tensions.

The hardliners believe that the most effective deterrent is arming the country and its proxies with advanced weapons, whereas moderates, while supporting arming the nation, also believe that regaining the confidence of the Iranian people by opening up political space, holding free elections, and taking deep and irreversible reforms would be the most effective deterrent. As former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif put it recently, “what has preserved Iran is not its weapons, but its people.”

Full article at Responsible Statecraft