Iran's Hamas Support: Reality or Rhetoric?
The current conflict in Gaza does not only serve Israel's interests and goals to reduce Iran's influence. It also serves US interests, which is why Washington is not intervening in a forceful manner in the current conflict. Washington wants Jerusalem to weaken Hamas, not because of the deep love which Joe Biden professed for Israel during his vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin. Its because the Americans know that sooner or later they will have to sit at the negotiation table with Ayatollah Khamenei. If Israel can reduce the value of Hamas, then the Iranians will have one less bargaining chip at their disposal, and that will not be so bad for Obama.
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, some analysts are addressing a valid concern, and that is whether Iran's relationship with Hamas is based on rhetoric or reality.
In his most recent Newsweek editorial, Fareez Zakaria stated that "Hamas is not Iran's pawn."
He goes on to quote the much respected Iran scholar Professor Vali Nasr as saying "Iran does not have tangible assets in Gaza or the Palestinian territories…It's a misunderstanding to think of its strength in that way. Its real influence in the Arab world comes from its soft power, the reputation it has built as the defender of the great Arab cause of Palestine."
If we look closely at the situation however we see that this analysis misses some extremely important evidence, which shows that Iran does indeed have tangible assets in Gaza, which includes the influence it wields over the Hamas leadership. And the evidence is not from Washington or Jerusalem. It is from the most powerful man in Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
In his 2003 Grand Bargain offer to the United States, Khamenei specifically talked about ceasing support for Hamas as part of the bargain he was offering to the U.S. This was confirmed by Flynt Leverett, the former Middle East director of the U.S. National Security Council who received the offer from the Iranians in 2003. In an interview with PBS he specifically said:
"On the Iranian side, they acknowledged that they would need to be prepared to deal with our concerns about their WMD activities, their links to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and they said in there that they would be prepared to eliminate military support for these organizations and to work to turn Hezbollah, for example, into a purely political and social organization in Lebanon."
Khamenei did not offer his influence over Shiites in Pakistan, because he has very little or none. The fact that he included support for Hamas as part of the bargain shows that he has something at his disposal. When the words "military support" are included as part of the bargain, it clearly shows that there is something more than Iran's image in Gaza or merely its reputation as "defender of Palestine."
Nor would that be enough for Hamas. It would be illogical for Hamas - an Arab Sunni organization with political as well as military aspirations - to side with increasingly isolated Persian Shiite Iran, solely for the sake of living under its reputation and no financial or military support in return. The losses in relations to rewards would make such a decision completely irrational and counter productive. Hamas' leaders may be good at sending their soldiers on suicide missions. It is very unlikely that they would do that with their own political aspirations.
The current conflict in Gaza does not only serve Israel's interests and goals to reduce Iran's influence. It also serves U/S. interests, which is why Washington is not intervening in a forceful manner in the current conflict. Washington wants Jerusalem to weaken Hamas, not because of the deep love which Joe Biden professed for Israel during his vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin. Its because the Americans know that sooner or later they will have to sit at the negotiation table with Ayatollah Khamenei. If Israel can reduce the value of Hamas, then the Iranians will have one less bargaining chip at their disposal, and that will not be so bad for Obama. Especially since - much like Iran - the U.S. attained its goal through proxy; which, in this case, happens to be Israel.
Meir Javedanfar runs the Middle East Analyst blog.
