The Smoking Gun

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

 

Late last week, with Joe Biden reportedly resolved to execute retaliatory strikes in response to the attack in Jordan that killed three American service personnel and wounded more than 30 soldiers, less resolute elements within the Biden administration baited Politico into publishing the laughable claim that Iran’s proxies had gone rogue.

 

Though the sources of these claims rarely provide reporters with attributable remarks, what they say strains credulity. When kinetic action is imminent against Iranian functionaries, we are informed of their independence from Tehran. But when Tehran is set to become the beneficiary of some inducement designed to lure it back to the nuclear negotiating table, the silencing of Iran’s terrorist proxies is framed as a fringe benefit associated with diplomatic outreach. Somehow, Iran is never responsible for the behavior of the terrorist outfits it cultivates, but their attacks stop when Iran is bought off. Odd, that.

 

If Iran has no control over its terrorist proxies in the region, it’s paying a lot for the privilege of being ignored. As the Jerusalem Post detailed in a Tuesday dispatch, Hamas’s leadership is one of the recipients of Iran’s largesse, and we’re not talking about walking-around money. “Israeli forces located documents proving direct cooperation and communication between Iran and Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar,” the report read. “Images of the documents subsequently published by the IDF suggest the figure is, in total, $154 million.”

 

Two reports published by the Wall Street Journal in the wake of the spectacularly barbaric October 7 attacks maintained that Tehran had an operational role in the lead-up to that unprecedented horror. “Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday,” the Journal reported on October 8. In a follow-up days later, the Journal revealed that some regime elements in Tehran were surprised only by the timing of Hamas’s attack on the Jewish state. That report forecast an effort by U.S. intelligence to reach a definitive conclusion about the role Iran played in the run-up to that attack — a conclusion that somehow remains unreached.

 

But the evidence uncovered by the IDF changes things. Even if Iran played no direct role in Hamas’s actions on October 7, it is nonetheless implicated by having bankrolled the terrorist group in control of the Gaza Strip. The Biden administration has tried to avoid reconciling with this inescapable reality. The Israeli military is forcing the administration’s hand.