Documents discovered by the Israeli military in Gaza reveal regular Iranian payments to Hamas in recent years, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Revealed by The London Times last week, the first of two letters, dating from 2020, is addressed to Abu Ibrahim, better known as Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza.
“Attached is a table of payments from Iran between 2014 and 2020,” the letter states, revealing a total of $154 million transferred during a six-year period.
It shows monthly payments from Iran starting in July 2014, after a Hamas-Israel flareup known as “Operation Protective Edge.”
The letter shows cash given directly to Sinwar and in one case to Abu al-Abed, believed to be Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
The second letter, from November 2021, is handwritten by Marwan Issa, deputy head of Hamas’s military wing. He signed them as Abu al-Baraa.
They appear to detail at least $222 million in payments from Iran, the Times reported. Issa is believed to have been killed in an IDF airstrike in March.
Iranian payments detailed in the second letter appear to be linked to the May 2021 “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” which Hamas called “Operation Sword of Jerusalem.”
“After the war, Iran transferred the largest single sum, $58 million. Two further sums of $5 million are mentioned as having been received as well as additional expected,” the Times reported.
“The letter also details how most of the money was allocated to ‘the apparatus’—the fighting wing of Hamas—as well as a smaller sum to the political wing and $2 million directly to Sinwar,” it said.
“The bump in payments after the 12-day war in 2021 indicates Iranian appreciation and encouragement. Israeli intelligence believes the payments continued at least until the October 7 attack and helped finance the arsenal of rockets and weapons used in it,” the Times said.
According to the Times, the money, in cash, arrived from Iran to Beirut, where Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers handed it over to Hamas.
Mentioned in the letters as the source of the funds is Saeed Izadi, referred to as Haj Ramadan. He runs the Palestinian division office in Iran’s Quds Force, one of five branches of the IRGC, and coordinates funding with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror groups.
His direct commander was Brig.-Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was killed in the April 1 airstrike in Damascus. That assassination was the pretext for the Iranian attack on Israel on Saturday night.
