RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Israel-Iran war erupted as Palestinians were marking the 18th anniversary of the Hamas coup against the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip.

On June 14, 2007, the Iran-backed terror group staged a violent coup that lasted for a few days and resulted in the death of hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were lynched in public squares, while others were thrown from the top floors of high-rise buildings. Human Rights Watch reported on June 12, 2007:

“In internal Palestinian fighting over the last three days, both [the PA’s ruling] Fatah faction and Hamas military forces have summarily executed captives, killed people not involved in hostilities, and engaged in gun battles with one another inside and near Palestinian hospitals…

“On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra’fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building.”

The Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip could not have taken place without Iran’s financial and military support for the terror group. Former PA General Intelligence Chief Tawfik Tirawi has accused Iran of playing a “big role” in Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip. Dozens of Hamas members, Tirawi said, had received military training in Iran. He also accused Hamas of smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip to fight the PA.

Prominent Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid noted that Hamas was able to defeat the security forces of the PA in the Gaza Strip partly as a result of training and weapons provided from Iran.

“It looks like through the operation of Hamas, I can see the Iranian weapons there. I am quite sure [of the Iranian connection]. And this is why Hamas becomes more violent than any other Palestinian political movement.”

According to a 2020 US State Department report, Iran provides about $100 million annually to Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas. As of 2023, according to an Israeli security source, Iran had significantly increased its funding for Hamas to $350 million a year.

The late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera TV network in 2022 that his group had received $70 million in military aid from Iran, adding:

“We have rockets that are locally manufactured, but the long-range rockets came from abroad, from Iran, Syria and others through Egypt.”

Earlier, Haniyeh had thanked the Iranian regime for “supporting and funding the [Palestinian] resistance financially, militarily, and technically.”

In 2020, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar revealed that Iran gave him $22 million in cash. In an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language television network al-Alam, Zahar said he outlined some of the financial problems Hamas faced during a meeting with Iran’s slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani during a visit to Tehran in 2006.

“The following day, I found $22 million in bags at the airport” as a Hamas delegation was about to leave Tehran,” Zahar said. “We had agreed on a higher amount, but we were only nine people, and we could not carry any more cash due to baggage allowance.”

Iran’s financial and military support for Hamas enabled the terror group to build a vast network of tunnels and manufacture weapons in the Gaza Strip. Thanks to this support, Hamas was able to build an army consisting of tens of thousands of fighters and turn the Gaza Strip into a large base for jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Were it not for Iran’s financial and military backing, Hamas would not have been able to launch its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel. On that day, Hamas terrorists and thousands of “ordinary” Palestinians murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounded thousands.

Unsurprisingly, Iran was quick to praise the massacres. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed the October 7 invasion as “logical and legal.” Iran’s foreign ministry described the massacre as “a turning point in the history of the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist regime.”

The Iranian regime chose to support Hamas and its other terror proxies – Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis – to advance its goal of destroying the “Zionist entity.” Iran’s mullahs bear full responsibility for the death of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They are also responsible for the death of the “two-state solution,” because their support for the 2007 Hamas coup led to the creation of two separate rival Palestinian entities in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Iranian regime was always prepared to support any Palestinian or Arab who carried the banner of jihad against Israel.

The Iranian regime has brought nothing but death and destruction on the Palestinians and many Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Its support for terror proxies and militias has triggered civil war and bloodshed throughout the Middle East. These attacks include the deaths of more than 1,000 Americans (such as here, here and here).

Iran and its proxies, such as the Houthis, have repeatedly launched rockets and missiles not only at US assets in the Middle East, but also at its oil rich-Sunni neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Many Arabs and Iranians will not shed a tear if Iran’s mullahs are removed from power.

If US President Donald J. Trump wants actual long-term peace in the Middle East, like it or not, there is no alternative other than allowing the departure of Iran’s theocratic terrorist dictators and liberating the Iranian people – just as, after World War II, the US liberated Germany and Japan to enable the election of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Germany and the highly successful democracy in Japan.

As pointed out in Politico, hardly a “right wing” news outlet, “Iran’s Target Isn’t Just Israel. It’s Us.”

More negotiations are just the usual stalling tactic of the Iranian regime. Interminably negotiating some “deal” — which, based on their track record (such as here and here), Iran will cheat on, no matter how vigilant its guardians are, just allows Iran’s regime a 24-karat opportunity to resupply, regroup and terrorize the region again.

Trump would be wise to let Israel “finish what they started” in Iran and do what is good for Israel, the Free World and the West.

The last thing Trump needs is “help” from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US and the rest of the international community should fully support Israel in its war against Iran’s bloodthirsty regime. Not only is it brutal to its neighbors and Israel, but to its own people as well.

In 2024, Iran repressed, imprisoned, tortured and executed a large number of its own citizens.

The US urgently needs to spearhead not another porous, fake “nuclear deal” but real security, stability and freedom — not only for millions of Muslims, Christians and Jews, but also for the great people of Iran who have been forced to suffer under vicious psychopathic despots long enough.

For real peace, Trump needs to be the Churchill of our time. Let Israel finish the job. It is for us.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.