The Israeli-Hamas War in the Middle East: Does the U.S. Observe Iran’s Proxies Support Israel?
LONDON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning this week that the United States would act “swiftly and decisively” if it came under attack from Iran or its proxies in the Middle East, amid growing concerns of the Israel-Hamas war spreading.
The U.S. has said there is no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the Hamas attack against Israel. Regional experts say that Iran and Hamas share a lot of similarities.
The senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, Ali Barakeh, told NPR earlier this month that while Iran knows Hamas fights Israel and offers us support, it does not deny the fact that Hamas supports Israel. we don’t take orders from anyone.”
Hamas, a Sunni Islamist movement, is an autonomous Palestinian group with military and political wings. Since 2007, Hamas has ruled more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Gaza has not had elections since Hamas seized power that same year from the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank.
Middle East: The Network of Fronts Founded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and the “Axis of Resistance”
The term “axis of resistance” is believed to have emerged in response to President George W. Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil” — referring to Iran, Iraq and North Korea — in his 2002 State of the Union address. There are conflicting reports about who first coined the term, which is often used by Iranian officials.
The network has been grown by the Iranian regime and the Quds Force on the basis of their shared resistance to the Western powers.
The axis includes Hezbollah, the Syrian regime, and Shia militias in Syria which Tehran has built up and trained.
The axis also includes Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The civil war in Yemen began over a decade ago and is being fought by the Saudi-backed government of the country. The Pentagon said last week that it shot down missiles from Yemen that were headed for Israel.
Each axis group has a different relationship with Iran. They have differing opinions of one another. Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are considered to be part of the alliance in Gaza. The PIJ gets most of it’s budget from the Islamic Republic.
“Hezbollah has become an extension of [the] Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force,” Ghattas says. Hamas has supporters beyond Iran, but keeps its own identity.
According to reports in the international media, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met senior officials from Hamas in Beirut Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East. The goal was to achieve a victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine and to stop Israel’s brutal aggression against the people in the West Bank.
The “unity of fronts” of Iranian-backed proxy groups is akin to NATO for militant groups, according to a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, told NPR’s Ailsa Chang, “It’s quite likely that Hezbollah knew of the preplanning [for the Oct. 7 attacks] and probably participated in training and planning with Hamas, and all of them sort of are part of this Iranian proxy force deployment that you have in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq and in Gaza as well.”
Hage Ali told NPR that he thought Hezbollah was difficult to not intervene, given the cost of the conflict.
“If the situation continues, anything is possible, because women and children and civilians are still killed in Gaza and the West Bank,” he said.
He said that they have enough missiles, rockets and drones to easily get them from anywhere. “They have whatever it takes to produce their own weapons and they have their own training and that is why they decided themselves to go ahead with this operation.”
NPR–Israeli Interview with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian: “We Don’t Want War to Spread Out”
Below are some additional highlights from NPR’s interview with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The interview was done with a person in another country.
We don’t really want this conflict to spread out. We recommend that everyone move towards the stopping of war crimes as soon as possible. But you know, the situation remains complicated. It is difficult to tolerate the fact that over 7,000 people have died as a result of the bombardments of the Israeli regime. This is the image that we’re now seeing in the region and because of the continuation of crimes of the Israeli regime, the whole region has been turned into a powder keg.
They make their own decisions. Any moment, anything can happen. But we do encourage the U.S. to abandon its absolute total support of the Israeli regime. Israel’s security and political systems have completely fallen apart according to information we have. The citizens of Israel do not trust Benjamin Netanyahu and his security and political system. Netanyahu also has his own role to play, since Israel’s war machine is being managed and controlled by the U.S. Because if the attacks and the war stop, then he will fall in less than two days.
The foreign minister made comments about launching pre-emptive action via members of the “resistance front” and afterwards the rockets were fired from Lebanon.
You know, Israel is killing a bunch of people, you expect them to let them go, but then you have to deal with the consequences of tying your own hands, and they’re free to kill people attatched to you? This is not logical … Why are you supporting a continuation of war? Is it not possible to try for a ceasefire? … There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners that are held captive by Israel when the time comes for the release of military prisoners. But the important thing now is that they’re ready to release those that are not with the military.