Iran's Hamas patronage almost two decades old

Damascus: Ever since the Gaza war started in late December 2008, the entire world has been talking of Iranian sponsorship of Hamas, but very little is known about how the Islamist group in Gaza is linked to the clergy of Tehran.

Iranian patronage of Hamas is actually not new, and dates back to December 1990, when a delegation from the Palestinian group went to Tehran to build bridges with the Islamic Revolution.

Tehran's support for the Palestinians was made loud and clear from day one of the Islamic Revolution, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini closed down the Israeli Embassy in Iran and symbolically presented it to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

After that, however, Iran became too busy to mind Palestinian affairs, consolidating domestic affairs, fighting Saddam Hussain in the 1980s, and helping to create Hezbollah in Lebanon, after the Israeli invasion of 1982.

Matters changed when Iraq was defeated in the Gulf War of 1991, and Iran had with more time and resources to concentrate on the Middle East.

In October 1992, Iran invited Hamas statesman Mousa Abu Marzouk to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.

According to US sources back then, the Iranians pledged an annual $30 million (Dh110 million) to help the Palestinian resistance during the first intifada. One year later, while Arafat was signing the Oslo accord on the White House lawn, Hamas was opening its first office in Tehran, claiming that it shared "identical views" with the Islamic Republic, "towards the Palestinian cause in its Islamic dimension".

According to then-director of the Central Intelligence Committee James Woolsey, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Iran provided Hamas with $100 million by early 1995. On April 6, 1994, Hamas carried out its first car-bombing, allegedly using technical advice from the Iranians, and killed eight Israelis in Afula.

One week later, it carried out its first suicide-bomb operation, using the same skills that had been mastered by Hezbollah in South Lebanon, and killed five in Hadera.

The death of Arafat in 2004, and the victory of Hamas in the elections of 2006 all drew the military group closer to Tehran.

When the international community boycotted the Hamas-led government in Gaza, Iran came to its rescue, offering to bankroll the Palestinian bureaucracy and prompting Prime Minister Esmail Haniya to comment that Iran constituted, a "strategic depth for the Palestinians".

Speaking from Tehran at the time, with comments that made world headlines and angered many within Palestine, Khalid Mesha'al noted, "Iran's role in the future of Palestine should continue and increase."

He added, "Just as Islamic Iran defends the rights of the Palestinians, we defend the rights of Islamic Iran. We are part of a united front against the enemies of Islam."

Iran went one step further in its support, saying that it would cover the entire deficit of the Palestinian budget, in view of the US-led embargo on the Hamas-led Palestinian Territories.

By 2006, Hamas announced that it had received $120 million from Iran, used to pay wages of state employees, and the security forces of Hamas.