The heads of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, held a meeting with senior leaders representing at least six regional terrorist groups with close ties to the Iranian regime, Iranian state media revealed on Wednesday.
The meeting – which reportedly featured representatives from jihadist organizations such as Hamas, the Yemeni Houthi organization, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – occurred in the context of many of these individuals traveling to Iran to attend the funerals of late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. Iranian authorities declared the crash, which occurred on a flight back from neighboring Azerbaijan, an accident, and have vowed to investigate the cause but at press time, have not formally accused any geopolitical enemy of targeting Iran’s president.
Iranians follow a truck carrying coffins of the late President Ebrahim Raisi and his companions, who were killed in a helicopter crash, during a funeral ceremony for them on May 22, 2024, in Tehran, Iran. Raisi died after his helicopter went down in a foggy mountain region near the Azerbaijan border on Sunday. The crash also claimed the lives of Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several other officials (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images).
Iranian “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared five days of mourning after the official announcement of Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian’s death. Thursday marked the third day of government-mandated mass funerals, after a funeral procession in the city of Tabriz on Tuesday, then in Tehran on Wednesday. Thursday’s mass event occurred in the city of Mashhad.
The orchestrated mass funerals appear to be in part a response to widespread reports that the initial response in Iran to the president’s death was celebration. Videos verified by news outlets circulated on Sunday and Monday of Iranians setting off fireworks in Tehran and sharing sweets to celebrate Raisi’s demise. As both a top prosecutor in Tehran for many years and as president, Raisi was responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners and the slaughter of women’s rights and pro-democracy protesters.
The “political” head of the Hamas jihadist organization, Ismail Haniyeh, was a prominent guest at the funeral observances on Wednesday, receiving a personal audience with Khamenei and allowed to address the crowd to chants of “death to Israel!”
Haniyeh reportedly participated in the all-terrorist summit in Tehran, according to state media.
Qatari newspaper the National, citing the Arabic-language Iranian state outlet al-Alam, reported that Haniyeh joined a top representative for the Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, as well as an envoy from the Yemeni Houthi movement, formally known as Ansarallah. The Saudi news agency al-Arabiya additionally reported, citing Iranian state media again, the presence of representatives for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sometimes described as a rival group to Hamas, the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” and assorted Iraqi Shiite militias that rely on Iran’s largess to engage in terrorist operations in that country.
Iranian outlets described the meeting as an assembly of the “Axis of Resistance,” a term that Iran is increasingly using to brand its sprawling network of proxy terror groups. Iran is the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.
Iran’s regime-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that the head of the IRGC, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, and the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Esmayeel Qaani, oversaw the meeting. The Quds force is the IRGC’s primary international terrorism unit, in charge of orchestrating often covert terrorist acts against American and Israel targets abroad. Al-Alam also described the unit as responsible for training terrorists in “a network of militias across Iraq and Syria.”
Qaani’s presence at the meeting is notable, as he has endeavored to keep a low profile following President Donald Trump’s decision to kill his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, in a drone strike in January 2020.
According to Tasnim, the group discussed “the latest political, social and military developments in Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Storm operation against the Israeli regime, and the role of the resistance front in the region.”
The “al-Aqsa flood” is the terrorist name for the unprecedented invasion and assault against Israel on October 7, led by Hamas terrorists. The jihadists killed an estimated 1,200 people, including children as young as infants, and engaged in widespread abductions and acts of gang rape, torture, and desecration of corpses. An estimated 130 hostages, taken from residential neighborhoods and other civilian targets, remain missing since October 7.
On October 7, a Hamas spokesman told the BBC on the record that Hamas had “direct backing” from Iran for the siege.
“The attendees at the meeting emphasized the need for the continuation of the fight and struggle until the Palestinian resistance’s complete and ultimate victory in the Gaza Strip with the participation of all resistance groups and fronts across the region,” Tasnim reported, referring to the terrorist gathering on Wednesday.
Al-Arabiya translated reports on the discussion as emphasizing a “continuation of jihad” against Israel.
Khamenei has so far used Raisi’s death to promote expanding jihadist terrorism against America and Israel:
#Iran's Supreme Leader to Hamas Chief: God's promise will be fulfilled in the formation of the Palestinian state from the river to the sea. pic.twitter.com/jQIDojbMI2
— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) May 22, 2024
In his meeting with Haniyeh on Wednesday, Khamanei emphasized that Iran would support terrorism in Israel to pursue ” the formation of the Palestinian state from the river to the sea.” The phrase “from the river to the sea” – from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea – is a call for the genocide of the Israeli people, referring to the land that constitutes the entirety of the state of Israel.
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