U.S., Israel Fear Pickup in Iranian Support of Hamas

WSJ

TEL AVIV—Iran’s support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has diminished significantly in the past three years, limiting Tehran’s influence over talks to end the war in the Gaza Strip, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

But the longer the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, these officials said, there’s growing concern that Tehran could try to increase arms shipments to Hamas.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the replenishing of Hamas’s military arsenal. “The Muslim world has a duty to arm the Palestinian nation by all means,” he said in a speech ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Iran’s security services have historically been the largest supplier of arms and cash to Hamas, the Islamist group that gained control of Gaza in 2007 following an internal military conflict with the secular Palestinian party Fatah.

Tehran is also the major backer of a second Palestinian militia, Islamic Jihad, which has joined Hamas in firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip over the past three weeks.

Iran, however, has significantly scaled back its support for Hamas since 2011, due to both economic and political considerations, according to Israeli and American officials.

Iran and Hamas split over their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following the breakout of a civil war in Syria that year. Shiite-dominate Iran has since stepped-up its backing of the Syrian regime, while Hamas, a Sunni organization, pulled its leadership from its Damascus headquarters nearly three years ago after Mr. Assad began a violent crackdown on his largely Sunni opponents.

“Hamas has lost friends, particularly military supplies and training” that Iran provided to the organization through Syria, said a senior Israeli defense official. “And Iranian funds were diverted to PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] from Hamas.”

U.S. officials believe pervasive international sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program have also limited Tehran’s ability to fund its proxies in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria.

Some Iranian arms have continued to flow to Hamas in recent months, said U.S. and Israeli officials, through the Egyptian Sinai region. And Hamas’s weapons trade with Libya has flourished.

Qatar and Turkey, however, have supplanted Iran as the biggest financial backers of Hamas in recent years, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Qatar alone has pledged to fund the salaries of the Gaza Strip’s local, Hamas-dominated government.

U.S. officials said this shift in Hamas’s support base explains why Qatari capital Doha and Turkish Capital Ankara have emerged as Secretary of State John Kerry‘s primary intermediaries with the Palestinian organization in recent days.

Last week, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiya and Turkey’s chief diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu, were regularly ferrying messages to Hamas’s political chief, Khaled Meshaal, at his base in Qatar’s capital during frantic cease-fire talks.

“You barely hear Iran mentioned in relation to the talks,” said a senior U.S. official.