Iran’s Permanent Mission to the UN said yesterday that Tehran was not involved in the Hamas-led resistance operation against Israel, the bloodiest and costliest so far for the occupation state.
According to a statement, Iran’s UN mission said: “The resolute measures taken by Palestine constitute a wholly legitimate defense against seven decades of oppressive occupation and heinous crimes committed by the illegitimate Zionist regime.”
The country’s UN mission noted that the “success” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was largely down to the surprise element of the attacks against the occupation army outposts and illegal settlements: “They [Israel] find it very difficult to accept that in the intelligence community, it is being narrated that they were defeated by a Palestinian group.”
Tehran’s denial of involvement comes after yesterday’s report by the Wall Street Journal that a Hamas official erroneously described as a “spokesman”, Ghazi Hamad said the resistance movement had received support from the Islamic Republic in the latest operation.
The report also cited anonymous “senior” members of Hamas and Hezbollah as saying that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions” and that Iranian security officials “gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday.”
The Gaza-based resistance movement, along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have previously officially noted Iran’s support for the armed struggle for national liberation. However, it has been speculated that these allegations are being used by Israel and its western allies to implicate and target Iran.
The Israeli army’s international spokesman, Richard Hecht, said at a presser on Saturday that “Iran has tentacles everywhere” when asked if Iran was the root cause of the resistance operations, which have now claimed the lives of over 1,000 Israelis and has led to the capture of over 150 prisoners of war. Contradicting these claims, the head of the Israeli army’s spokesperson unit, Daniel Hagari, reportedly said that there was no indication of Iranian involvement in the war in Gaza.
Yesterday an exclusive report by Amwaj, citing a “senior Arab security source in Beirut with close knowledge of the inner workings” of the IRGC’s Quds Force rejected claims that Iran was involved in the planning or execution of the on-going operation.
Source : MEMO
