The violence unleashed on October 7th was planned over a long period of time – and not just in Gaza, says Iran expert Aarabi. How Iranian jihadists are using Hamas for their own purposes is clearly visible.
October 7, 2023 – a day bursting with human tragedy. The father who knowingly places himself in the terrorists’ hail of bullets so that his wife and the baby have the chance to escape. The nine-year-old who is kidnapped alone to Gaza. The family found shot to death in their shelter; Parents and three children hold each other dead in their arms.
The force with which the Hamas terrorists brought suffering to Israel could not be generated spontaneously. Although Israeli security authorities estimate that the terrorist organization itself was surprised at how many men, women and children it was able to massacre or kidnap that Saturday, with 240 people it may now be holding more hostages in Gaza than the group can even handle. But the master plan for the bloody massacre was sophisticated, came into being many months ago and apparently not in the Gaza Strip.
The command center in Lebanon
“With regard to the planning and coordination of the terrorist attack, we see that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards have already created a joint command room for Hamas and Hezbollah in 2021,” explains Iran expert Kasra Aarabi. “They assembled in Lebanon to plan terrorist attacks against Israel and Jewish targets around the world.”
The political scientist with Persian roots, who studied at King’s College in London, specializes in research on the Revolutionary Guards, an extremely powerful institution in Iran, both militarily and politically, with around 190,000 fighters. It is closely linked to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and suppresses any rebellion against the mullahs’ regime in its own country. Its arm responsible for “international affairs,” the Quds Brigades, pursues the declared goal of wiping out the State of Israel. “Quds” is an Arabic short form for Jerusalem.
“The Revolutionary Guards of Iran are the most anti-Jewish organization in the world,” says Aarabi in an interview with ntv.de. They are Islamist hardliners who teach their recruits and their families jihad, the “God’s fight” against Jews, Christians and opponents of the Iranian regime. “They all must convert according to their teachings or be killed.” Aarabi, who researches for the New York NGO “United Against Nuclear Iran”, has been observing changes in the brigades’ doctrine, their structures and their personnel for some time. There were many indications that the Islamists “wanted to move forward in the confrontation with Israel. They were making preparations for this confrontation.”
In order to destroy Israel and fight infidels, the Revolutionary Guards formed the so-called “Axis of Resistance” almost 20 years ago with Syria, Iraq, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. Hamas, the only Sunni group among Shiites, initially did not have such a close relationship with Iran. But the Quds Brigades were pragmatic enough to also use religious opponents in their fight against Israel.
Iranians asked for “live updates”
This was done relatively openly. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian, himself an active member of the brigades, traveled to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. “He met with senior Hamas officials, including chief Ismail Haniya, and explained what he expected from Hamas, the Axis of Resistance: live updates on the situation on the ground.”
But relations between the Revolutionary Guards and Hamas began to flourish in the 1990s, “when Palestinian fighters were trained at Hezbollah University in Lebanon for suicide attacks and other terrorism,” says Aarabi. A contingent of Hamas terrorists was also sent to Taba for rocket training.
According to Aarabi, Hamas has visibly gained importance in the “Axis of Resistance” since 2021. The Revolutionary Guards are its largest military, logistical, financial and armaments supporter. Iranian General Ghassem Soleimani, who was murdered by the USA at the beginning of 2020, played a key strategic role in this relationship. He orchestrated and planned attacks against US targets in the Middle East and supported Hamas “both in recruiting and radicalizing young Palestinians for terror, as well as in expanding the sophisticated underground tunnel network under the Gaza Strip,” said the Iran expert.
The perfidious strategy of hiding its own fighters, weapons and infrastructure behind the civilian population was not Hamas’ idea, but was copied from Hezbollah, which had already used this model in 2006: “The reconstruction of civilian buildings, schools, hospitals , mosques and residential buildings with the sole purpose of storing their own rockets there.” A strategy that today presents Israel with the problem that Hezbollah positions can hardly be attacked without also causing civilian casualties.
Textbook information warfare
According to Aarabi’s analysis, the Iranian masterminds can be satisfied with the outcome of the massacre so far, including in terms of information warfare. The best example from his point of view is the false report that a hospital had been shot at. “Many Western media outlets adopted and published Hamas’ narrative. And although intelligence, for example from Canadian intelligence, soon suggested that it was a failed Islamic Jihad rocket, the damage had already been done.” This is a concept “like something out of the Revolutionary Guard textbook.”
According to Aarabi, the combination of terror with psychological warfare as well as the unleashed violence of the attack is similar to what Hezbollah has already shown. “It is impossible that the Revolutionary Guards were not involved in the October 7 massacre.” Hamas does not have the technical capabilities to carry out attacks of this magnitude. The idea that this attack took place without the green light of the Revolutionary Guards, without the strategic coordination and planning behind it – is “unimaginable” from an expert’s point of view.
The researcher also sees the revolutionary brigades active outside the Middle East, for example with so-called soft power operations. An Iranian university that is closely linked to them operates official collaborations with five German universities. “We only discovered these connections on Monday,” said Aarabi. “The president of this university has connections to the ideological leader of the brigades, who calls for armed jihad against Jews.” Another example for the expert were the sometimes large rallies in Germany, which called for solidarity with the Palestinians, but also repeatedly for the fight against Israel. They are orchestrated by Islamist networks.