The Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces, one of the key political groups in Iran’s parliament, admitted April 3 that Tehran played a “strategic role … in planning and executing” the Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel, giving the lie to the regime’s previous denials.
The announcement came after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi and 15 others, including additional Iranian commanders, Syrian forces and a representative of Hezbollah, were killed when Israeli missiles destroyed the building where they were meeting in Damascus April 1. Zahedi was the central organizer of Tehran’s military interventions in Lebanon and Syria. They were planning new terror attacks against Israel.
On Oct. 7 Hamas and Islamic Jihad death squads killed some 1,200 people — mostly Jewish civilians — left more than 5,000 wounded, seized 250 hostages and raped scores of women. It was the largest anti-Jewish pogrom since the Nazi Holocaust.
Tehran officials claimed the massacre was the work of Hamas alone and not coordinated with the Tehran-led “axis of resistance,” which includes Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Tehran-financed and trained Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq.
The Joseph Biden administration — looking to cut a new deal with Tehran — also absolved Tehran of responsibility, asserting the Iranian regime was caught by surprise by the Hamas assault.
But as the Militant pointed out from the start, Tehran was directly involved in planning and carrying out the pogrom.
Since Oct. 7, the Iranian government’s proxies have stepped up attacks on Israel. Hezbollah missile strikes have forced the evacuation of 60,000 from Israel’s northern border. Houthi attacks have virtually stopped maritime traffic in the Red Sea. And Tehran-armed militias in Iraq and Syria have launched unsuccessful drone attacks on Israel.
Six months after the Oct. 7 assault, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their allies still hold half of the hostages, or the bodies of those they’ve killed. The youngest is Kfir Bibas, who turned 1 year old in captivity Jan. 18. He was kidnapped by Hamas along with his mother and 4-year-old brother Ariel. The oldest is Iraq-born Shlomo Mansour, who turned 86 in March.
Tehran fears working people of Iran
While the reactionary bourgeois clerical regime in Tehran foments attacks by its proxies, it has sought to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel itself because it fears opposition from working people inside Iran.
At a soccer game in Tehran April 7, sports officials announced a minute of silence for the Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in Syria. Instead, fans jeered, blew horns and shouted the entire time.
Working people in Iran know that Hamas and the other members of Tehran’s “axis of resistance” are cut from the same cloth as the regime there. Since 2018 workers of all nationalities have joined a series of protests across Iran as opposition has mounted to the regime, its assaults on living standards, its restrictions on the rights of women and oppressed nationalities, like the Kurds, and its military interventions abroad.
Biden pushes for cease-fire
The Biden administration is taking advantage of the killing of seven volunteers from World Central Kitchen in Gaza by Israeli drone strikes April 2 to step up pressure on Israel to stand down and accept an immediate cease-fire.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi apologized, saying the deaths were a “grave mistake.” The army command fired two commanding officers and reprimanded several others. The IDF said that the officers violated standing “orders and open-fire regulations.”
President Biden, echoed by the New York Times and other liberal press, charged that Israel has “not done enough to protect civilians,” giving a boost to the anti-Israel campaign by Hamas apologists among the middle-class left worldwide.
Biden won’t mention the Aug. 29, 2022, strike by U.S. drones in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 civilians — including an aid worker and seven children, or other atrocities by U.S. imperialist forces worldwide. This is the way capitalist armies function in war time.
Hamas is responsible for the current war. It could end it immediately by releasing all the hostages, leaving the tunnels and handing over those responsible for the Oct. 7 pogrom.
Hamas’ goals have never been secret. Its military leader, Yahya Sinwar, made this clear in a message to a September 2021 conference, “Promise of the Hereafter — Post-Liberation Palestine.”
Sinwar said Hamas had been preparing for years “on the ground and in its depths” for the “full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river.”
The final declaration issued by the conference laid out what Hamas would do if it won. “Settlers” — their code word for Jews — who resist “must be killed.”
“Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry … should not be allowed to leave,” it said, because they acquired their knowledge “while living in our land and enjoying its bounty.” The document does not spell out what they plan to do with these Jews once their “expertise” is no longer needed.
Hamas is the main obstacle workers in Gaza face to join with other workers, including Jews, to fight for their own class interests. Since taking over in 2007, the Islamist outfit broke strikes by unions, killed its political rivals in Fatah, restricted women’s rights and has run roughshod over the population.
Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV reported that its police arrested six people from the Palestinian Authority March 30, claiming they were “suspicious.” According to the Palestine Authority, these individuals were coordinating aid to Gaza. Five of the six remain in captivity.