The Hamas assault on northern Israel has been in the planning for more than a year and Iran had supplied the terror group with military training, logistics, and weapons support valued in the millions of dollars the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
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“The amount of training, logistics, communication, personnel, and weapons required provides a massive footprint,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA senior operations officer who served in counterterrorism roles in the Middle East, told the paper.
“This suggests both Iranian involvement given the complexity of the attack, and highlights the colossal intelligence failure.” The use of paragliders — reminiscent of a spectacular 1987 attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Israel that killed several soldiers — “surely required training outside of Gaza,” Polymeropoulos said.
Iran denied reports it was involved in the murderous attack that had killed some 1,000 Israelis and resulted in some 150 Israeli captives taken to Gaza, including women and children.
We are not involved in Palestine’s response, as it is taken solely by Palestine itself,” Tehran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement. But other officials in Iran had publicly celebrated the attack.