Iran's Deadly Ambition. Ilan Berman

wealthy Gulf donors (like Qatar) that it remains an indispensable part of the resistance against the Jewish state. Perhaps most significantly, it also succeeded in mending fences with Iran.

      Even prior to the Gaza war, relations between Hamas and Tehran had begun to move toward rapprochement. In the spring of 2014, negotiations between Hamas and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, while failing to bridge differences over Syria, did manage to establish a modus vivendi in which Hamas would again garner Iranian support. Thereafter, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani announced that Tehran was poised to resume financial support for Hamas, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, agreed to meet with Khaled Meshaal, the movement’s political chief, in Tehran.⁴³ But the summer 2014 conflict brought the two sides closer still. Hamas had once again proved its worth as a core element of the “axis of resistance” arrayed against Israel. Iran, for its part, saw in a rejuvenated relationship with Hamas “an opportunity to improve its standing in the Islamic world, which had suffered—especially among Sunnis—thanks to its steadfast support of Assad.”⁴⁴ As a result, the strategic partnership between Iran and Hamas is now back on track—and the likelihood of a future conflict between Israel and an unrepentant, strengthened Hamas is high.⁴⁵

      Iran’s stake in the Palestinian Territories is far larger than simply Hamas, however. It dates back to the early 1990s, when the Islamic Republic—championing resistance against the “Zionist entity” as an alternative to the Oslo Process then being pursued by the West—took on a leading political role in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.⁴⁶ It did so via two primary vehicles. The first was Hamas, with whom Tehran signed a formal accord codifying cooperation in 1992⁴⁷—an arrangement that would endure until the two sides fell out over Syria. The second was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a smaller yet equally radical Palestinian group that was wholly beholden to Tehran for its existence, depending on the Islamic Republic for its entire budget (some $2 million annually).⁴⁸

      By a decade later, that influence gave Iran a major voice in Palestinian politics—and a deciding vote in violence against Israel. In the early 2000s, one Israeli analyst estimated that Iran (via Hezbollah) was responsible for “no less than 80 percent” of terrorism directed against the Jewish state in the Palestinian Second Intifada (2000–2005).⁴⁹ Similarly, Israeli officials at the time judged that Iran had succeeded in assuming “control” of terrorism carried out by various Palestinian factions against Israel.⁵⁰

      Israeli officials attempted to stem the tide of this support, with some success. In October 2002, Israeli forces seized the ship Karine A in the Red Sea, interdicting 50 tons of Iranian arms destined for the Palestinian Authority’s dominant Fatah faction, ruled by Yasser Arafat. The incident was the most public of a series of Israeli military successes preventing Iran from playing more deeply in the Palestinian arena. But Arafat’s death in 2004 and the subsequent (and somewhat unexpected) parliamentary victory of Hamas in the winter of 2006 provided the Islamic Republic with greater strategic reach throughout the Palestinian Authority.