Over the course of the last few weeks, terror group Hamas’ leadership met with Iranian leaders to smooth over tensions between the two, especially when prior remarks from a leaked audiotape of a senior Hamas official, Musa Abu Marzouk, stated that Iran hasn’t helped the group since 2009. Hamas, at one point, enjoyed Iran’s support up until Hamas decided to back the Syrian opposition who are fighting against Bashar al-Assad and his regime in Syria’s bloody civil war. Iran then cut Hamas off from almost all support it had once gave because of this decision.
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It was only a few months ago that Hamas had welcomed ‘Shadi Al-Mani’i (also known as Abu Mus’abi) — commander of Wilayat Sina, ISIS’ Sinai branch’ to meet with Hamas’ military wing to discuss a joint venture of cooperation between the two terror groups. This branch of ISIS, Wilayat Sina, was allegedly behind the planting of a bomb on a Russian airliner that crashed on the Sinai Peninsula resulting in the deaths of 224. The leader of this ISIS branch, Shadi Al-Mani’i, has been a wanted man by Egyptian authorities for years for his alleged masterminding of numerous terrorist attacks on Israelis and now that cooperation with Hamas seems to be strengthening, the Hamas-built Gaza tunnel system will be further utilized by this ISIS branch to implement more attacks on Israelis/Egyptian army while smuggling weapons back and forth between the two terrorist factions.
When Hamas decided to back the Syrian rebel forces against Assad, they did so out of Sunni alliance, this of course put great strain on their relationship with the Shiite Iranian leadership, thus causing financial/military support to become all but nonexistent. Iran enjoyed using Hamas as a proxy against other Sunnis in the region, like “mercenaries for hire” so-to-speak; the Syrian civil war changed that and now Hamas finds itself right back at the feet of Iran practically groveling to be put back in their good graces, financially and militarily. Here lies the problem though, Iran is fighting ISIS and is encouraging other countries to do the same, so where does that put the relationship with Hamas at? Especially since Hamas is meeting with ISIS leadership?
Hamas, the ISIS branch Wilayat Sina, and Iran share a commonality in one a target in particular, that target being Israel and her people. It would come as no surprise for Iran to turn a blind eye towards Wilayat Sina despite the ISIS branch being targeted by Egyptian authorities (Egypt and Iran have enjoyed strengthening ties over the last few months). Hamas, Wilayat Sina, and Iran want nothing more than to see Israel suffer loss of life and to have her people live in perpetual fear on a daily basis, so it stands to reason that while all three may not work directly with each other, they certainly will not stop each other from attempting to inflict harm on Israel.
Hamas learned quickly that being loyal to the Sunnis of the Syrian rebel forces cost them dearly when the support from Iran became all but nonexistent. The unemployment rate in Gaza alone is at 43%, that is the highest unemployment rate in the world. So what’s a terror group to do when its region has the highest unemployment in the world? It turns to the oldest profession in the world, prostitution (metaphorically speaking, of course), to ‘pay the bills’ while pandering itself to the evil entities of terrorism for profit regardless of the stakes. Hamas’ thirst for money is a clear example that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’
