An Expert Explains: Iran’s role in the Israel-Hamas crisis

What has Iran been doing since the Hamas attack on Israel?

Iran has been raising the issues of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the displacement of large numbers of Gazans, and the alarming humanitarian situation in the enclave. It has rejected accusations that it was involved in the planning and operation of the Hamas attack; Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations has written to the Secretary General denying any direct involvement of his country. However, Hamas has indeed received Iran’s support over the years, and Iranian officials have acknowledged this on several occasions.

Like Blinken, the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian too is on a tour of the region, meeting Iran’s allies. In Beirut, he met with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and warned of a “huge earthquake”; he also met leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In Qatar, Amirabdollahian reportedly met with Doha-based Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas. He also had meetings with the Qatari leadership on the Gaza situation. The meeting is significant in the context of an agreement between the US and Iran, under which Tehran would release American prisoners in exchange for the Americans releasing $6 billion of Iranian assets that it has frozen.

But after the Hamas attack on Israel, the US went back on the agreement, even though Iran had freed the prisoners in September. The US and Qatar — through whom the money was to be released — agreed not to do so as the US government faced domestic criticism that a portion of it would end up in the hands of Hamas.

Iran has also held discussions with Iraq and Oman. It has urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to convene an emergency meeting to discuss and respond to the crisis in Gaza, and offered to host such a meeting.

What role do the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia play in the crisis?

A significant diplomatic development has been a telephone conversation between Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza. This was the first call between the leaders after the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries in March 2023 through an agreement reached with China’s mediation, and the consequent reopening of their embassies in Riyadh and Tehran.

Saudi Arabia has been engaging in negotiations with Israel for normalising relations, particularly with the encouragement of the US. The events in Israel and Gaza have forced Saudi Arabia to re-assess the negotiation trajectory, and the country has frozen these efforts for now. Iran considers the efforts at normalisation as contributing to its own security challenges, and a betrayal of the Islamic ethos of the Saudi state as the protector of the holy sites of Islam.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has been concerned about growing Iranian influence in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The March 2023 rapprochement was a major step, but it has not fully altered the Saudi perception of an Iranian threat to its security.

For Israel, a deal with Saudi is important to confront the Iranian threat. As of now, Iran finds itself benefiting from the compulsions that have forced the Saudis to freeze their negotiations with Israel.

And what has been Iran’s relationship with the Palestinians?

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a major landmark in defining the nature of Iran’s policy towards Palestine and Israel. The revolution projected the assertion of the mustazafin, the oppressed, against the mustakbirin, the oppressors, a framework in which the assertion of anti-Zionism and support for the struggle of the Palestinians was implicit.

One of the first acts of the new Iranian regime after the overthrow of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s monarchy was the handing over of the Israeli embassy in Tehran to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Prime Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Iran, Mehdi Bazargan, and Yasser Arafat were present when the keys of the embassy building were handed over to the PLO. Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic, declared the last Friday of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), which is observed as a day of support to the Palestinian cause.

Iran’s support to the Palestinian cause through the PLO suffered a setback when Arafat supported the Saddam Hussein regime in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). Later, Iran criticised the PLO’s negotiations with Israel.

Iran then worked to form an “axis of resistance” against Israel with newer forces in Palestine and Lebanon. Hamas, which emerged in the context of the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) of 1987, and Islamic Jihad became the main organisations that received Iranian support in Palestine.

Hezbollah, a Shi’ite organisation which was founded in 1982 in Lebanon and which drew inspiration from the Iranian Revolution, and Hamas, a predominantly Sunni organisation, were the two major allies of Iran. Supporters of the idea of a “Shi’ite Crescent” found it difficult to explain the Iranian support to Hamas.

The ongoing war in Gaza has triggered skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah, and raised fears that the conflict will spread to a wider regional context. The Islamic Republic’s role in regional politics and its decades-long confrontation with Israel have directed increased international scrutiny on Iran’s endeavours in West Asia in general, and its policy towards Israel and Palestine in particular.

The Israeli state considers Iran its number one regional enemy. It has tried to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme through direct and indirect attacks. Iran on its part has had a policy of challenging the Israeli state diplomatically and strategically ever since the initial days of the Islamic Republic.

Iran is fully aware that any regional escalation of the current conflict would be detrimental to its attempt at confronting the deteriorating economic conditions at home due to the continuance of American-led sanctions.

(A K Ramakrishnan is Professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of International Studies, New Delhi.)