The Washington Post has confirmed that the Hamas terrorist group received significant support from Iran for its attacks against Israel.
The newspaper has bolstered previous reporting on Sunday from the Wall Street Journal that revealed the Iranian government helped Hamas plan the attacks over the last several weeks.
The WSJ confirmed its report with multiple officials and provided more details.
According to the WSJ report, officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been working with Hamas and other Islamic terrorists in planning the attacks.
The outlet revealed that Iran helped to plan all aspects of the murderous attacks, including firing thousands of rockets and invading Israel by land, sea, and air.
“Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said,” the WSJ reported.
Now the Washington Post has added further conformation to the claims in a Monday evening report.
The Post confirmed that Iran played a “key” role leading up to the attack.
“The Palestinian militants behind the surprise weekend attack on Israel began planning the assault at least a year ago, with key support from Iranian allies who provided military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons, current and former Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials said Monday,” the Post reports.
“[C]urrent and former intelligence officials said the assault bore hallmarks of Iranian support, and noted officials in Tehran have boasted publicly about the huge sums in military aid provided to Hamas in recent years.
“Current and former intelligence officials confirmed that Iran had provided technical help to Hamas in manufacturing the more than 4,000 rockets and armed drones launched into Israel since Saturday.”
The reports come despite the consistent refrain from Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration that there’s no conclusive evidence to prove Iran helped plan or orchestrate Hamas’s terror attack on Israel last Saturday.
“The amount of training, logistics, communication, personnel, and weapons required provides a massive footprint,” former CIA Senior Operations Officer Marc Polymeropoulos told the Post, pointing out that Hamas’s use of paragliders “surely required training outside of Gaza.”
Meanwhile, Jonathan Finer, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”:
“I think what we can be quite clear about is that Iran is broadly complicit in these attacks for having supported Hamas going back decades, for having provided financial support, for having provided training, for having provided weapons to Hamas.
“What we don’t have is direct information that shows Iranian involvement in ordering or planning the attacks that took place over the last couple of days.”
Later on Monday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby doubled down on Finer’s remarks.
“Iran has long supported Hamas and other terrorist networks throughout the region with resources, capabilities training,” Kirby said.
“And so in that regard, clearly, Iran is complicit here.
“But in terms of specific evidence on this, on these sets of attacks — no, we don’t have anything.”
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