Hamas Admits Being Iran's Proxy

It's something I've been saying for some time now.

The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry.

Speaking on the record but withholding his identity as a target of Israeli forces, the commander, who has a sparse moustache and oiled black hair, said Hamas had been sending fighters to Iran for training in both field tactics and weapons technology since Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza strip of Palestinian territory in 2005. Others go to Syria for more basic training.

“We have sent seven ‘courses’ of our fighters to Iran,” he said. “During each course, the group receives training that he will use to increase our capacity to fight.”

The most promising members of each group stay longer for an advanced course and return as trainers themselves, he said.

So far, 150 members of Qassam have passed through training in Tehran, where they study for between 45 days and six months at a closed military base under the command of the elite Revolutionary Guard force.

Of the additional 150 who are in Tehran now, some will go into Hamas’s research unit if they are not deemed strong enough for fighting.

Hamas is a proxy for Iran. If you want peace in the Middle East, you're going to have to drain the swamp that is Tehran. They've got the money (from oil of course) and the ideological and theological purpose to their actions.

They seek nothing less than the destruction of Israel and the spread of Islam at the sword. That Israel refuses to cease to exist and that the US has now constrained Iran's ambitions are problems that Iran will seek to overcome through the existing and expanded use of its proxy forces - Hizbullah and Hamas.

The war against Israel being fought by Hamas every day and by Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006 were an extension of the Iranian strategy to slowly bleed Israel out of existence. Combine this with the extremely aggressive statements by Ahmadinejad calling for Israel's destruction, and you get a picture of a regime that seeks to back its words with deeds.