TEL AVIV – Iran has agreed to raise its monthly payments to Palestinian terror group Hamas to $30 million in exchange for intelligence on Israeli missile stockpiles, Israel’s Channel 12 news reported Monday.
In a meeting last month in Tehran between a delegation of senior Hamas officials and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hamas also requested help from Tehran to “get closer” to the Syrian regime after ties were cut during the country’s civil war, the report said, citing an unnamed Arab source.
Tehran promised a massive hike in funding for the terror group, which currently hovers around the $7 million per month mark, should it succeed in supplying intelligence on the location of IDF missile caches.
The nine Hamas officials, including the terror group’s deputy politburo chief Saleh Arouri, promised to convey the request to the movement’s military leaders in Gaza, the report said.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon responded to the report, saying that “despite lacking food or medicine, Iran/Hamas evidently have plenty of money for terror.”
Hamas officials just left Tehran with reportedly an increase to $30 million/month in support. Despite lacking food or medicine, Iran/Hamas evidently have plenty of money for terror. Israel is determined to act against all branches of Iran's terror operations. pic.twitter.com/myZouPMKvT
— Ambassador Danny Danon | דני דנון (@dannydanon) August 5, 2019
Separately on Monday, Iranian diplomat Amir Al-Moussawi said that Tehran and its terror proxy Hezbollah had facilitated the “first steps” in implementing a Hamas return to Syria, Al Nahda News reported.
Noting that Hamas has “weight and prestige,” Moussawi said that restoring relations between the terror group and Damascus was crucial in the fight against Israel as well as any potential conflict between Iran and the U.S.
Moussawi added that Hamas was also ready for “any confrontation with the Zionist entity if war were to break out between Iran and [Israel] and the U.S.”
During the Hamas visit to Tehran, Arouri said his group and Iran are on “the same path” in fighting Israel, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported at the time.
“We are on the same path as the Islamic Republic — the path of battling the Zionist entity and the arrogant ones,” Arouri said during a meeting with Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, Kamal Kharazi.
Arouri was joined in Tehran by other senior Hamas officials, including Moussa Abu Marzouk, Maher Salah, Husam Badran, Osama Hamdan, Ezzat al-Rishq and Ismail Radwan.
Arouri, who in October 2017 was elected deputy chairman of Hamas’ politburo, is also one of the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the mastermind behind several terrorist attacks against Israelis, including the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.
The U.S. State Department last year issued a $5 million reward for any information leading to Arouri’s arrest.
He has made several trips to Iran since his election and praised the Islamic Republic for being the “only country” supporting Hamas’ efforts to destroy Israel.
“Iran is the only country that says that entity is carcinogenic and should be uprooted from the region,” he told the pro-Hamas Al-Quds TV in February 2018. “It is the only country that is prepared to provide real and public support to the Palestinian resistance and others to confront the entity.”
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