Iranian support for Hamas
[2][3][4] According to a 2020 US Department of State report, Iran provides about $100 million annually to Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas.
During the early 1990s, a delegation from Hamas, headed by Mousa Abu Marzouk, engaged in discussions in Tehran with senior officials, among them Ayatollah Khamenei.
These operations were, in their scale, scope and sophistication, different and larger than any attacks of the past, and it has been alleged that both Syria and Iran had helped in their planning and financing.
[11] In 2000, families of American victims of the attacks filed a lawsuit against Tlass, Kanaan and Iranian Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian.
[1] According to Lebanese militant Anis al-Naqqash, during the Second Intifada, Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, and Imad Mughniyeh, chief of military operations for Hezbollah, oversaw the smuggling of weapons to the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions.
In 2006, Iran intervened to support the nearly insolvent Palestinian Authority in Gaza, which was now under Hamas control, as foreign aid collapsed.
During a December 2006 visit to Tehran by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Iran committed to providing $250 million in assistance.
[17] After the 2007 imposition of a blockade on the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt, the Iranian Quds Force under the longtime direction of General Qasem Soleimani had been active in supporting the further construction of tunnels under Gaza and the smuggling of weapons through these tunnels to the armed wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Two people came up with the idea of digging these tunnels: The first is the martyred commander Imad Mughniyeh, and the second is Hajj Qasem Soleimani who went to Gaza more than once and contributed to the defense plan from the moment it was first drafted.
[19]Retired Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Ezzatollah Zarghami admitted in November 2023 of having visited and inspected the Gaza tunnels himself along with senior Hamas members, during his active service with the Quds Force: Fajr-3, which is a 240 mm rocket, was one of our products.
[20]In December 2023 Mansour Haghighatpour, also a retired Quds Force General, stated that the creation of the tunnels under Gaza was an effort not only by the Palestinians but by the whole "Axis of Resistance": The other thing I would like to point out is that the resistance axis, which planned with the Palestinians to build more than 400 kilometers of tunnels under an area of land that did not exceed 40 square kilometers, took various possible “scenarios” into consideration.
The tunnels that were being tug, and its relationship with the rest of the Islamic world, particularly those in Lebanon, particularly those in Iran, flourished, to such an extent that now, the so-called strongest army in West Asia still cannot defeat those people who have been starved for more than three months.
[22]During the November 2012 Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari said that due to the geographical isolation of the Gaza Strip, Iran cannot directly provide weapons to Hamas but still provides them with the technology and parts through the tunnels, which is then used by the al-Qassam Brigades to manufacture a Palestinian homemade version of the Iranian Fajr-5 missile that has managed to hit Israeli targets within the city of Tel Aviv.
[24] In the weeks leading up to the attack, some 500 fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad received training in Iran, under the guidance of the IRGC Quds Force.
[25] According to The Washington Post, the attack occurred "with key support from [Iran] who provided military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons.
