Why the promotion of the Iran-Hamas connection in the media should be treated very carefully
Is Iran involved?
The attack on Israel by Palestinian radical groups from the Gaza Strip has intensified an old debate about the extent of Iranian participation in the Palestinian resistance movement. In fact, more and more reviews are appearing with theses that Iran was somehow involved in the events of October 7, 2023.
Some authors (including those in Russia) have already directly written that such a level of organization, they say, could not have been achieved without the direct participation of Iranian intelligence services and the military. This is being discussed on various platforms. This version is good in that it explains the level of preparation for the operation, but bad in that it is based primarily on the political narratives of the Western liberal wing.
These narratives are very tenacious, old, and they are already used as a kind of “friend or foe” marker not only in the West, but also in Russia. In the Middle East it is also part of internal discourse and political struggle.
For a long time now, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement has been in first place on the liberal agenda, to which all possible problems in the region and a significant part of the problems beyond its borders are attributed.
The well-known Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is releasing its third collection of “analysis trailers” - a series of descriptions of episodes (hereinafter referred to as a quote) “shedding a bright light on global terrorist and criminal activities that the Lebanese Hezbollah would prefer to hide from prying eyes.”
Here are Hezbollah’s alleged connections with drug cartels in South and Central America, African diamonds, opium from Bangladesh and Pakistan, human trafficking, Captagon, synthetic drugs, weapon, lithium, precious stones, cryptocurrencies, money laundering, cybercrime.
This description of the scope of Hezbollah's activities in the liberal version is truly worthy of the work of a modern J. Verne or L. Boussenard, and not the modest M. Levitt (Fromer-Wechsler Fellow and Director of the Reinhardt Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute).
Further, all of the above is traditionally presented in conjunction with Hezbollah’s main partner, Iran, and, if necessary, Russia is also drawn in. Some of these theses are then distributed across domestic TG channels, penetrating into YouTube videos produced in Ukraine and affiliated channels of the fugitive opposition. This often also applies to observers who no longer consider themselves liberals.
This media demonization of Hezbollah and narrative bundles should not be taken lightly.
For example, official Damascus had problems in the League of Arab States in connection with the demand to block Captagon channels in Syria. However, it was not B. Assad who supplied this “medicinal product” to ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation) during the active phase of the Syrian campaign, and later these channels passed through territories not controlled by the official Syrian government.
But it’s easier to attribute these supplies to Europe to Hezbollah in conjunction with B. Assad and Tehran, and not to groups in northern Syria and the strange community of “refugees” around the American military enclave of At-Tanf on the border of Syria and Jordan.
Today, US Secretary of State E. Blinken claims that “there is no evidence of Iranian involvement in the Hamas attack.” But he does this, as was described in the previous material, not at all for the love of objectivity, but due to the fact that he needs to try to keep Hezbollah in place, leaving room for Iran to maneuver, and put together some semblance of a coalition from the Arab countries not only with a strong “condemnation of Hamas”, but also with resolutions giving Israel complete freedom of action.
Time will come, circumstances will change and it will turn out that E. Blinken already has “new data”, for example, in the presence of one or even more aircraft carrier formations opposite Lebanon.
Actually, the aircraft carrier group was sent not to help in the fight against Hamas, but to stop the possible threat of Hezbollah - it just needs time to deploy and to develop a position at the UN.
If it doesn’t work out, the narratives will continue to work, pumping up emotions in the information field, channeling them until they are needed in terms of practical politics.
The Wall Street Journal is already on duty:
“According to senior Hamas and Hezbollah members, Iranian security officials helped plan Saturday's Hamas surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the attack at a meeting in Beirut last Monday.”
You don’t need to know what kind of high-ranking members of Hezbollah, and especially Hamas, with whom WSJ journalists communicate, this publication is simply systematically warming the soil to make it more convenient for E. Blinken to work later.
Western media have long learned to form this semantic mainstream and incorporate it into political decisions, the problem is that all this is automatically picked up by us.
A military confrontation with Iran was not and is not included in the plans of the current US administration, but Washington constantly needs to politically promote and support the theme “Iran is to blame for everything” - this is its media basis for the formation of regional coalitions. In some cases this works better, in others worse, but the “network voltage” is always maintained.
In Russia, unfortunately, a significant part of the media sphere is liberal, and even where the seemingly liberal agenda does not pass, it will be pushed through in parts, in slices, in pieces, as if by accident.
How many texts have I read about how the protests in Iran at the end of last year and the beginning of this year will lead to a change of power, that they lack democracy (and where do they have it), that they just need to create an image of a “under-country” - in brushstrokes, strokes.
Only then does this result in the fact that our cooperation programs with Iran have been slowing down for years, both in production and in logistics, until they are completely stuck.
So don’t be surprised if on the next channel it turns out that someone “heard” among Hamas members “officers who spoke Farsi” or something similar.
Why is it important to focus on this aspect?
Exactly because today a media campaign is unfolding around Gaza at a level no lower, and perhaps even higher, than the confrontation in Ukraine.
In the wake of what Hamas has done, the emphasis in the liberal media sphere will gradually shift precisely to the role of Iran, and then, either directly or indirectly, to the hand of Russia. Now it seems that there is no way to attract Russia to this - wait a little, the Western media will try to do this, again tying a knot with Ukraine, only now on the wave of emotions in the Israeli media and social networks.
But there is another important factor - in fact, this will replace the Palestinian issue itself - putting Iran in the first place. This happened at one time with Syria, and this happened with Yemen.
All countries in the Middle East, North Africa, as well as Turkey, helped the Palestinian resistance. Each of these states had its own movements in the Palestinian resistance, of which there were five.
This is the official Fatah as part of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Fatah, which moved to Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, as well as part of the Palestinians who moved to Syria and live there in their enclaves.
Unofficially, each country maintained its contacts in one way or another, helping with money (especially in blockaded Gaza), trade contracts, consumer goods, loans, but also military supplies, uniforms, and, more recently, technology.
Israel, in turn, tried to monitor these issues and, if possible, limit them, playing on the contradictions of regional players, while Israel was well aware that contacts between these movements and their sponsors remained. However, this did not mean that these movements were deprived of some kind of independence.
Here, on the contrary, it was the Lebanese Hezbollah that acted in relation to Iran as a player that fully coordinated its actions, especially in terms of steps that had an international effect, but the rest, in many respects, acted, although with the support of sponsors, but on their own - even the administration M. Abbas in relation to Riyadh and the Arab League. By the way, during the Syrian campaign, not all Palestinians in refugee camps supported official Damascus.
It is no secret that Hamas has been supported for a long time through various channels by Qatar, Turkey, and Kuwait, but relations with Egypt were tense, even to the point of strict restrictions on the border of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, one way or another, everyone maintained contacts with each other, even, it would seem, Shiite Iran.
There is indeed a supply chain into the Gaza Strip, where Yemeni groups (both pro-Iranian, pro-Saudi, and pro-Emirati), Sudan, and Bedouin tribes in the Sinai have been noted. The fact that on the Egyptian side in front of Gaza a ditch 10 m deep was dug, fences were built and some of the tunnels were blocked, in general, the supply process only complicated, but did not stop. It would simply be impossible for the 2,4 million people in this enclave to survive otherwise.
Actually, that’s why the first thing people started calling from Washington was not just anywhere, but to Cairo. And Cairo, by the way, this year signed the normalization of relations with Iran, returned tourists and students (Al Azhar University). And why call Cairo - because there were working contacts, but the United States did not call Qatar - Qatar announced that it does not share Hamas’ methods, but places the blame for the whole situation on Israel.
In such a situation, when on the one hand there are Palestinian movements close to each player, but at the same time everyone maintains contacts in one way or another, even trade, taking into account the outright madness that accompanied Hamas’s attack on Israel, on the topic of Iran’s involvement and even responsibility for the United States can get a very promising tool of indirect action on all players. Gradually pushing through it a version of the Israeli-Palestinian settlement that will not suit anyone in the Arab world, but will be somehow associated in public opinion with Iran. Believe me, the Western media will also change the topic of Ukrainian shadow arms supplies to the Palestinians into something like “they delivered the trophies through Iran” or in the same spirit.
The United States is well aware that Iran cannot distance itself from this conflict. As a result, through this “Overton window”, those who advocated some form of more or less civilized divorce in the old official positions between Israel and Palestine will find themselves at the dead end of this “Iranian narrative”, since gradually all protest forms and speeches gradually will be tied to the Iranian trail. This is all the more important since the clashes have spread to the West Bank and there public support at the grassroots is, for obvious reasons, on the side of Gaza.
It is hardly worth saying that in such a painful issue for Israel, the Western media will put Iran’s partner, Russia, as number two, and taking into account how pro-Western the media in Israel itself is, how connected the networks of media holdings and social networks are, this will create an additional tangle of problems.
For now, it can be stated that Russian observers and experts are very careless about this issue, not understanding that by introducing into the discourse the assistance of Iranian officers to Hamas from the suggestion of “Arab TG channels” and expanding the discussion, they are not demonstrating awareness, especially in the absence facts, but only complicate the work of official Moscow and Iran in the future, even if not in the very near future.
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