Other countries and organizations also conspired in the attack, said Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad.
Terrorist group Hamas reportedly received support from Iran to plan its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, a spokesperson of the group told the BBC.
Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad told the British broadcaster that Iran had been an instrumental factor in engineering the attack that has killed more than 1,200 people.
Mr. Hamad said that other countries and organizations also conspired in the attack, but he did not give any names, adding that the violence was a response to attacks on Muslims by Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
This comes as a report in The Wall Street Journal claimed that senior members of both Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah had disclosed that Iranian security officials played a role in planning Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The decision to launch the attack received approval at a meeting held in Beirut the previous Monday, according to the WSJ report.
This contradicts comments made by a Hamas senior leader who claimed that Iran’s Islamic regime and Hezbollah played no role in the attack but insisted they’re both ready to “join the battle” if Israel retaliates forcefully.
Ali Barakeh, a member of Hamas’s exiled leadership, made the remarks in an interview on Oct. 9 with The Associated Press in his office in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.
Mr. Barakeh said that Iran and Hezbollah have helped Hamas in the past, but that since the 2014 Gaza war, Hamas has been making its own rockets and training its own combatants.
Tehran is a key backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the Islamic Jihad, according to the Times of Israel.
Hamas has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. It remained relatively low-key over the past two years, having raised speculation on its increased focus on the economy. Meanwhile, this gave rise to other Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad, which have executed repeated attacks on Israel.
Iran has made no public admission of involvement in the recent attack, which followed just days after its supreme leader, Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, called for violence against Israel.
By Kos Temenes
