Since its inception, Iranian-Palestinian relations have functioned as a wedding of comfort based mostly on Iran’s pursuit of safety and the Palestinian want for state assist. Currently, Iran helps many Palestinian teams, together with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). However, these teams are usually not puppets and their relationship with Tehran is consistently evolving.
The Hamas-led assault on Israel on October 7 mirrored Hamas’ personal impartial calculations. These assaults couldn’t have occurred with out Iran’s long-term assist, however the assaults have been seemingly an unwelcome shock for Tehran, which has prevented full assist for Palestinian teams over the previous two months. is excessive. However, whether or not Hamas and PIJ stay carefully aligned with Iran will rely on the end result of the conflict in Gaza and broader dynamics within the Middle East’s altering geopolitics.
Given Jerusalem’s spiritual significance to Muslims, Iranian assist for the Palestinian trigger has at all times been partly ideological. Iran’s 1979 structure affirmed the duty to export the Iranian revolution to assist “dispossessed folks” around the globe. However, for the reason that late Eighties, curiosity in realpolitik has largely taken over. Iran has progressively come to assist Palestinian insurgents as an integral a part of its regional safety coverage to comprise and occupy Israel, which it, together with the United States, has lengthy acknowledged as the best risk to its safety and inside stability. Ta. From this attitude, a bunch’s Muslim credentials (or lack thereof) have been much less necessary than its willingness to confront Israel. As a outcome, for many years, Iran, which calls itself an Islamic Shiite republic, has supported quite a few secular, leftist, and Sunni Islamist teams.
Iran’s entry into Palestine was initially via the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat. The secular nationalist motion supported Iranian revolutionaries earlier than the shah’s overthrow in 1979, and even supplied a bodyguard for Ruhollah Khomeini whereas he was in exile in Paris. Many of the important thing figures within the early Iranian Revolutionary Guards additionally educated at PLO camps in Lebanon. In a extremely symbolic transfer, President Arafat grew to become the primary overseas chief to go to Iran after the Islamic revolution.[1]
The gradual softening of the PLO’s place within the Eighties, when it started back-channel negotiations with Israel, accepted the historic partition of Palestine, and renounced armed violence, contributed to the rupture of relations. Iran continues to supply some assist to PLO member states, together with the Marxist-Leninist PFLP. However, given the political and navy irrelevance of a lot smaller Marxist-Leninist teams within the occupied territories, the majority of assist has shifted to Palestinian Islamist teams with a purpose to keep the regional safety paradigm. did.
From the PLO to Palestinian Islamism
Iran’s early cooperation with Hamas and PIJ was inadvertently facilitated by Israel’s personal actions. Iranian officers first got here into contact with PIJ leaders in Beirut in 1987 after Israel expelled them to Lebanon as a part of an effort to suppress the Palestinian nationwide management within the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank.[2] Iranian-Palestinian relations additional strengthened in 1992 when Israel expelled tons of extra Hamas and PIJ members to Marj al-Zuhr in Lebanon.[3]
Without a long time of Iranian assist, the October seventh assault is unlikely to have occurred.
Since then, these Palestinian teams have made their technique to Gaza by way of Yemen and Sudan, via the Egyptian desert with the assistance of Bedouin smugglers, and eventually via cross-border tunnels constructed by Hamas. Stronger because of smuggled Iranian weapons. Iran additionally trains Palestinian technicians to fabricate weapons domestically, which at the moment make up the majority of Hamas’s complete arsenal. Other Iranian-backed teams within the Gaza Strip are additionally prone to profit from these preparations. Without a long time of assist, the October 7 assaults wouldn’t have occurred.
Political marriage between Iran and Palestine
The relationship between Sunni Hamas and PIJ and Shiite Iran has at all times been a wedding of comfort created by widespread pursuits on the bottom fairly than ideological affinity with Tehran’s political interpretation of Islam. As a outcome, every group continually adjusts its exterior relations in response to its personal strategic calculations. This was most evident after the Arab Revolts.
The Syrian rebellion reveals how each Iran and Hamas confront one another. Damascus-based Hamas leaders have tried to mediate between the Syrian regime and Sunni militants. However, the group’s political management rejected Iran’s calls for for unconditional assist for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in a severance of ties. Iran responded by halving its monetary help to Hamas from $150 million to lower than $75 million.nonetheless Tehran nonetheless maintained sturdy ties with the hardline Hamas management based mostly in Gaza. Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas’ armed group Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, had been visiting Tehran often since 2012.
Iran reportedly directed a number of the funds to PIJ, which remained impartial and prevented overt criticism of the Syrian authorities. Nevertheless, a couple of years later, relations between PIJ and Iran additionally confronted difficulties over the 2014 Yemeni civil conflict. Like Hamas earlier than it, PIJ has refused to assist the Iranian-backed Houthis or condemn Saudi Arabia’s navy intervention within the nation. Iran is chopping again on funding. This time, the cash was directed to the now-defunct al-Sabireen motion within the Gaza Strip, an Iranian-backed motion that sought to switch Hamas and PIJ with extra versatile proxies.
During this era, each Hamas and PIJ tried to pivot to various sources of assist. After formally severing ties with the Syrian authorities, Hamas sought cooperation with the so-called Sunni Axis, or Gulf monarchies akin to Egypt and Qatar. As a part of this variation of route, key Hamas figures, together with then-leader Khalid Mashal, relocated to Doha. In 2017, they introduced a extra versatile coverage platform aimed toward bettering the group’s standing within the Arab world and Western international locations.
And, considerably surprisingly, in May 2016, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards pledged to switch $70 million to PIJ. This seems to have been conditional on a change within the group’s place on Yemen. A month later, a PIJ delegation visited the Yemeni embassy in Damascus. He expressed assist for the “rise up of the Yemeni folks.” [foreign] It was an act of aggression, and concentrating on Yemen was the identical as concentrating on the Palestinian trigger. ”
Personal ideological beliefs might also have strengthened the connection between PIJ and Iran. Ziyad al-Nahla, the group’s chief since 2018, seems to be nearer to Iran than his predecessor, Ramadan Shalla. The resumption of ties might also replicate the motion’s conclusion that there aren’t any various funds out there. Since then, PIJ and Iran seem to have grown even nearer.
Hamas has additionally been working to restore relations with Iran over the previous 12 months. This was first demonstrated by the go to of one other senior Hamas official, Khalil al-Haya, to Damascus in October 2022. This successfully ended almost a decade of hostilities between Hamas and the Syrian regime, marking Hamas’s return to Iranian energy and demonstrating the failure of the Syrian regime. Last readjustment.
There has been intense hypothesis about whether or not Iran had advance information of the October 7 Hamas-led assault on the Israeli neighborhood, however Tehran shortly prevented direct duty and supplied info. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has introduced his intention to supply solely political, not navy, assist within the battle. This partly displays Iran’s want to keep away from a full-scale regional conflict that threatens its strategic pursuits. This is just not the primary time that Iran’s reluctance to supply help throughout a battle has dissatisfied Hamas. The alliance between the 2 international locations briefly cooled after Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, which was seen as disastrous for Iran’s nationwide pursuits. Iran’s determination to distance itself from the October 7 assaults is due to this fact in keeping with its long-standing technique of supporting Palestinian teams to strengthen its personal safety.[5]
failure of moderation
Hamas made an enormous miscalculation when it guess on the Sunni axis, permitting the Islamist Ennahda celebration to advance in Tunisa and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. However, after the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, the political tide shortly turned towards political Islam. The determination of his successor, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to tighten Egypt’s blockade of Gaza since July 2013 made this short-term change in route politically and financially unsustainable for Hamas. misplaced. With inadequate assist from Arab capital, Hamas was compelled to retreat to Damascus and Tehran to guard his nation’s pursuits.
The rapprochement with Iran could partly replicate the failure of Western states to interact with Hamas on the whole and its reasonable wing specifically. Hamas has at all times been the product of inside debates between social change and armed wrestle, between moderates and hardliners, between those that prioritize political motion and those that prioritize violence.[6] Hamas’s determination to take part within the Palestinian electoral course of in 2006 and to open the door to a two-state answer in its 2017 platform have been all made potential by the weakening of hardliners after the top of the Second Intifada. This undermined assist for armed teams inside Hamas. violence.
The worldwide boycott that adopted Hamas’s victory within the 2006 parliamentary elections seems to have solely succeeded in weakening moderates who sought to ascertain diplomatic relations with Western capitals. Sixteen years after the top of the Second Intifada, moderates have achieved few if any victories.This has as soon as once more strengthened the ability of hardliners. They push for nearer ties with Iran and argue that armed violence is the one means ahead. The October 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel was the end result of those shifting dynamics. However, because the previous has proven, the place of Hamas and PIJ is at all times in flux. Their future route is decided by the voices of moderates in these teams who’ve lengthy needed Arab and Western powers to remain out of Iran’s orbit by providing a practical political path in direction of Palestinian independence. It relies upon partly on whether or not we are able to strengthen the
[1] Jorgen Jensehaugen, “A Window of Opportunity for Palestine?” The PLO, the United States, and the Iranian Hostage Crisis,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 48:4 (2021), p. 602.
[2] Eric Scare, A History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Faith, Consciousness, and Revolution within the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), p. 107.
[3] Muhammad Musri, “Hamas’ Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations (1999), p. 23.
[4] Skare, History of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, p. 107.
[5] Leila Soula, Hamas’s Foreign Policy (London: IB Tauris, 2021), p. 95.
[6] Khaled Hlub, Hamas: Political Thought and Ideology (Washington, DC: Palestine Institute, 2000).