The Washington Post revealed further details uncovered in the secret documents captured by IDF forces in Hamas command centers in Gaza.
For years, Hamas leaders had planned an even deadlier terror assault on Israel than the one it perpetrated on October 7, including Sept. 11-style toppling of Tel Aviv skyscrapers.
Some of the plans were carried out on October 7 but others were more aspirational, including the plan to bring down a Tel Aviv skyscraper. Hamas could not determine how to bring down the skyscraper, continuing that targeting Israel’s rail system and using it to transport terrorists and powerful bombs was more practical.
Documents were found detailing Hamas’s advanced plans for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots and carrying out a combined assault on Israel on multiple fronts with the help of Iran and Hezbollah from the north, south, and east.
The documents reveal that Hamas assumed that once it launched a successful initial attack on Israel, Iran and Hezbollah would eagerly join in, stating that a key part of any operation would be “linking and preparing the external fronts (Lebanon, Syria, and Sinai) and agreeing on mechanisms for communicating peacefully and in war.”
The report added that Sinwar was “crystal clear” about his ultimate intention: the destruction of the state of Israel – reiterating his goal multiple times and repeatedly pressuring Iran to aid the terror group in its goal of wiping out the Jewish state.
Hamas sent letters to Iran’s top leaders in 2021 asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and training for another 12,000 terrorists.
In the letters, Sinwar pleaded to senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for financial and military aid, promising that with Iran’s support, he could completely destroy Israel in two years.
“We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it takes us toward achieving this sacred goal,” a June 2021 letter, signed by Sinwar and other Hamas officials stated.
“Hamas is so determined to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map that it managed to drag Iran into direct conflict — under conditions that Iran wasn’t prepared for,” an Israeli security official said.
Iranian officials publicly endorsed Hamas’s goal for the destruction of Israel, and expressed no concerns about the methods used on Oct. 7, said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran expert and senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.
“Iran trained Hamas and encouraged them to do exactly the things they did on Oct. 7,” Nadimi said. “Their goal was to get to the core of the Israeli state and crush it.”
However, Tehran preferred to cowardly hide behind its proxy forces to carry out operations against Israel.
“Iran’s goal is to delegitimize Israel, not to help Hamas achieve an impossible military victory,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. “Horrific images of Palestinian suffering is precisely how they’ve sought to delegitimize Israel.”
The documents also reveal what analysts and intelligence officials view as the potential motive for the surprise Oct. 7 assault. Minutes from an October 2023 politburo meeting reveal Hamas leaders lamenting the burgeoning of ties between Israeli and Arab Gulf states, a step that would “open the door for Arab and Islamic countries to descend on the same path, and will increase the complications of the resistance project.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
