Iran doubles down on backing Hamas, says US unable to block $6 billion fund

October 13, 2023
TEHRAN — Iranian authorities denied US media reports that Washington and Doha had agreed to hold the release of $6 billion kept in Qatari banks that were expected to be unfrozen as part of a US-Iranian prisoner swap last month.
“The U.S. government knows that it can NOT renege on the agreement,” Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations announced on its social media accounts. “The money rightfully belongs to the people of Iran, earmarked for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to facilitate the acquisition of all essential requisites for the Iranians.”
Hours before the US reports, Iran’s Central Bank claimed in a statement that the funds held in Qatar remained available to Iranian banks. In addition, it said, a separate $10 billion in Iranian funds — held in Iraqi banks due to US sanctions — were set to be transferred back to Tehran.
The reported US move to block the release of the Iranian funds was a response to the Islamic Republic’s backing of Hamas militants. The group killed more than 1,300 people in Israel over the weekend in a series of surprise attacks. Israel has been retaliating with relentless airstrikes on Gaza, killing nearly 1,800 Palestinians, many of them women and children, along with a further tightening of its siege on the already impoverished enclave.
Iranian officials have denied involvement in the Hamas rampage but have glorified it as a victory, throwing their full support behind the militant organization for its “legitimate response to Zionist crimes.” The Iranian government is busily engaged in a political push to mobilize the region against Israel, with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian embarking on a Middle East tour on Thursday that has taken him to Baghdad and Beirut.
“Should the crimes against the Palestinians continue, no possibility is ruled out, including new fronts being opened against [Israel] by other resistance groups,” Amir-Abdollahian told reporters upon arrival in Beirut.
In Iran, “resistance groups” typically refers to a network of proxies Tehran has been funding and arming across the Middle East to advance its ideology and target Israeli and American interests.
At a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Amir-Abdollahian warned the United States to “contain Israel.” Later, he sat down with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s closest ally and proxy leader in the region. Iranian media reported that the two exchanged views on what positions should be taken in the face of the ongoing “dangerous developments.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in a phone conversation that Hamas’ “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” had been triggered by the policies of the sitting “extremist” Israeli government. Raisi also declared in a speech in the southern city of Shiraz that the United States was an “accomplice” to Israeli “crimes,” in reference to the ongoing bombardments and blockade of Gaza. He doubled down on Iranian support for Hamas, saying such backing has never been off the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy agenda.
The hard-line president also discussed the ongoing conflict with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the first such conversation between the two since the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement was inked back in March. The two agreed on the need for Islamic unity and “an end to war crimes against Palestine,” according to Raisi’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs.
The degree to which the Iranian public endorses the official line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not measurable, but on Friday the state-run Islamic Propagation Headquarters organized anti-Israel rallies across large cities, where public burning of Israeli flags were broadcast live on state television.
And the hard-line news media, which has been idolizing Hamas, published footage of old military drills out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, practicing massive strikes on Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility.
“The Guards have for years prepared for a devastating attack on the Zionist regime’s center for weapons of mass destruction,” the IRGC-run Fars News wrote in the description of the video.