Hints of frustration surfaced in subsequent public statements by Hamas leaders including Khaled Meshaal, who in an Oct 16 TV interview thanked Hezbollah for its actions thus far but said “the battle requires more”. “Our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, this is the day when your resistance unites with your people in Palestine,” he said in an audio message. On Oct 7, Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander, called on its axis allies to join the struggle. Yemen’s Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel. Iran-backed militias have targeted US forces in Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah has engaged in the heaviest clashes with Israel for almost 20 years. The unfolding crisis marks the first time that the so-called “axis of resistance” – a military alliance built by Iran over four decades to oppose Israeli and American power in the Middle East – has mobilised on multiple fronts at the same time. “We woke up to a war,” said a Hezbollah commander. Its fighters were not even on alert in villages near the border that were front lines in its 2006 war with Israel, and had to be rapidly called up, three sources close to the Lebanese group said. Hezbollah, too, was taken by surprise by Hamas’s devastating assault last month that killed 1,200 Israelis.

The supreme leader pressed Haniyeh to silence those voices in the Palestinian group publicly calling for Iran and its powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah to join the battle against Israel in full force, a Hamas official told Reuters. Iran’s supreme leader told the head of Hamas in a face-to-face meeting in Tehran that his country would not enter the war with Israel and accused the terror group of not giving any prior warning of the Oct 7 attacks.Īyatollah Ali Khamenei told Ismail Haniyeh that Iran – a longtime backer of Hamas – would continue to lend the group its political and moral support, but would not intervene directly, according to three Iranian and Hamas officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked to remain anonymous.

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