This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that "Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday."
Citing "senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group," the report by three WSJ Middle East correspondents said, "Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land, and sea incursions – the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War."
"Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon," the Hamas and Hezbollah sources told the Journal.
Here is how U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken described the carnage in Israel in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press": "This is the worst attack on Israel since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, almost exactly 50 years ago. But there's also a big difference. That was a state-on-state conflict, army against army with clear front lines. This is a massive terrorist attack targeting Israeli civilians, gunning people down in the streets of their towns, gunning them down in their homes, dragging Israelis, men, women, and children, across the border with Gaza, a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair, women and children all being taken hostage. So, you can imagine the impact this is having in Israel, and it should be revolting to people around the world."
Blinken said the U.S. did not yet have evidence that Iran directly backed the terror attack on Israel: "In this moment, we don't have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out. But that's something we're looking at very carefully, and we've got to see where the facts lead."
Providing further evidence that counters those administration talking points, the Wall Street Journal reported, "A European official and an adviser to the Syrian government, however, gave the same account of Iran’s involvement in the lead-up to the attack as the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members."
Blinken comes clean on Iran
Blinken did make a big admission in the NBC interview that cuts against President Biden's and former President Obama's widely criticized efforts to build better ties with Iran and change the despotic regime's behavior through sanctions relief and massive infusions of U.S. cash.
"Iran has, unfortunately, always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas," Blinken said. "And it's done that when there have been sanctions. It's done that when there haven't been sanctions. And it's always prioritized that."
The conservative site Hot Air pounced on the rhetorical shift by America's leading diplomat, in an article Monday titled, "Blinken blows the lid off White House talking points on billions for Iran": "Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on all the Sunday morning political shows to answer questions about the war that has started in Israel. He didn’t admit what a bone-headed move it was to supply Iranians with billions of dollars but he did let the truth come out. Blinken admitted on Meet the Press that 'Iran has unfortunately always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism.'”
Biden's and Dems' Iran 'gaslighting' exposed
"All the gaslighting going on by Team Biden and its Democrat supporters was thrown under the bus by that one statement," Hot Air's Karen Townsend wrote. "Of course, reasonable people understand that Iran funds terrorism. Hamas is a proxy in Iran’s war against Israel. Nonetheless, Biden and his administration are hellbent to do the same as Biden and the Obama administration did. They try to cozy up to Iran in hopes of deterring its nuclear program. It’s the absolute definition of insanity but Biden tried to pick up where Obama left off when he came into office."
The article continued: "How many pallets of billions of dollars have to land in the bank accounts of Iranian authoritarian leadership before it dawns on the leftists that nothing changes? Iran isn’t just going to stop doing what they are doing. Iran takes the money and laughs at us. This time they started a war with Israel."
The conservative site RedState chimed in regarding the harsh facts on the ground in the Middle East that now expose the folly of the Democrats' pro-Iranian policies: "At this point, anyone denying Iran's involvement might as well proclaim that the sky is not blue. Iran's own supreme leader came out and praised Hamas' attack as it was occurring. Now, we have further confirmation, including from Hezbollah, Iran's chief anti-Israel terror militia, that Iran was directly behind planning and pulling the trigger on the invasion."
RedState writer "Bonchie" continued: "Naturally, that is a fact that Joe Biden doesn't want to deal with given he has spent the entirety of his term lifting sanctions on and giving money to Iran. It is beyond obvious that without the White House's support, Iran would have been severely restricted in what material support it could provide to Hamas. Unfortunately, as Iran's economy was on the verge of collapse (and possibly its Islamist regime), the Biden administration saved them. Tens of billions of dollars have flowed into the Ayatollah's coffers as a result of renewed oil sales and the unfreezing of assets."
Trump's secretary of state implicates Democrats
Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state under President Trump, blasted the Biden administration for its "appeasement" of Iran, which Pompeo said led to the savage, ISIS-like attack by Hamas in southern Israel.
"The responsible party here are the leadership, the terrorists in Gaza Strip, Hamas. They are funded by Iran and the United States policy to cozy up to Iran has created enormous risk for Israel which we are seeing play out today," Pompeo said on Fox News Sunday.
He posted on X Monday: "The Biden Administration’s first instinct was appeasement. And that weakness is how this war started in the first place."
Pompeo said in another X post-Monday: "Make no mistake: this is at its core about historic efforts by Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth."
The Wall Street Journal reports, "A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the Islamic Republic stood in support of Gaza’s actions but didn’t direct them," but few foreign policy experts, at least on the Right, believe that.
"The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides – Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official," according to the Journal.
In an essay posted on X Saturday, historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson wrote: "The Biden administration had recently released some $6 billion to Iran through a prison swap deal that saw South Korea hand over embargoed Iranian money to Qatar – despite Tehran’s increased anti-Israeli rhetoric and its loud brag about the escalation. We should assume money for rockets (Hamas claims they have launched 5,000, and have received 100,000 of them via the Damascus airport) and weapons in general for Hamas were supplied by Iran, which again is likely the chief catalyst for this surprise attack."
