ODESA, UKRAINE — While Iranian-supported terrorists blitzed Israel with Russian-made rockets on Oct. 7, Russia was launching Iranian-made kamikaze drones against Ukrainian sea ports. “[T]here is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” declared Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky, who, like other Eastern European leaders, sees both conflicts as encompassed in a broader Russian strategy to gain world leverage through an alliance with Iran.
“The timing and reasons for the Hamas attack are linked to Russian and Iranian interests,” said Marko Mihkelson, head of Estonia’s liberal Reform Party. “Hamas is known to be strongly supported by both countries…. [I]t is quite obvious that Russia has a wider interest in both distracting attention from Ukraine and, on the other hand, complicating Israel’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.”
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A finger on the terrorist button serves to influence the world oil prices on which the Russian and Iranian military depend. Defense spending in Russia is projected to rise by 68 percent next year.
Moscow and Tehran have been developing military ties since joining forces to intervene in Syria’s civil war, where Russian Sukhoi jet fighters and advisers have provided vital support to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Hezbollah militias propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Iran reciprocated by committing practically its entire production of cheaply manufactured Shahed-136 drones to Russia, boosting Moscow’s Ukraine war effort at a critical moment. The Shahed has become a key weapon in Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure.
Both regimes have recently merged their military industries to mass produce loitering munitions in what White House national-security spokesman John Kirby has described as “an unprecedented level of military and technical support.” Their interlocking arms and intelligence networks are now feeding Hamas, which has become a key instrument of their joint diplomacy to isolate Israel and drive the U.S. from the Middle East.
Hamas delegations have twice visited Moscow this year, meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last March. “Russia’s ties to Hamas are well-documented, as are its ties to Hamas’ main backer, Iran,” reports RadioFreeEurope. Following its Oct. 7 genocidal attack, Hamas called on Vladimir Putin to mediate a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, saying it has “a high level of trust in Russia.”
Recent comments by Russian officials about tracing weapons used by Hamas to stocks of U.S. arms delivered to Ukraine are self-incriminating. American M-4 carbines used by Hamas would likely have been captured by the Russian army from Ukrainian forces. There’s also a few hundred thousand of them lying around Afghanistan, with the multi-billion-dollar worth of abandoned U.S. equipment, that the Taliban would eagerly sell to kill Israelis.
A YouTube video disseminated on Facebook appears to indicate that there were Russian speakers with Hamas units storming into an Israeli compound on Oct. 7. A distinctive Russian voice ordering the attackers to cover is overheard amidst the gunfire. The audio’s authenticity cannot be verified. But intelligence analysts doubt that Hamas could have conducted such an intricate surprise attack breaching multiple points of the thick barriers surrounding Gaza on its own.
IRGC generals are believed to have designed the plan, but satellite intelligence, sophisticated electronic jamming, and cyber war capabilities blinding Israel’s elaborate surveillance systems could have only come from Russia, which surely had advance knowledge.
Hamas’ terror blitz was timed with diplomatic moves by Moscow and Tehran to pressure Arab governments to scuttle the Abraham Accords that the U.S. has been negotiating with Israel. While the IDF was still clearing Hamas from gutted kibbutz on Oct. 9, Putin was receiving Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, in Moscow.
Sitting beside the poker-faced Iraqi strongman, Putin declared U.S. policy in the Middle East to be a “failure,” accused Washington of “escalating” the violence through its support for Israel, and demanded the creation of a fully independent Palestinian state.
Iraq’s position is precarious. Its government is heavily financed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, but pro-Iranian politicians hold a plurality of seats in the parliament, and Iranian-backed militias control the country’s eastern half. The main impediment to Iraq’s inclusion in a hostile block stretching from Iran to Lebanon is the thin red line of U.S. military installations that support Iraq’s regular army. They have come under constant rocket and drone bombardment since al-Sudani’s visit to Moscow, which was timed with a warning from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei: “The definite position of the Islamic Republic is that countries that make the gamble of normalisation with Israel will lose. They are betting on a losing horse.”
Terrorist diplomacy appears to be working. Saudi Arabia, in addition to other Arab governments that were reported as on the verge of officially recognizing Israel, froze talks with Tel Aviv and canceled planned meetings with President Joe Biden when Israel began air strikes against Gaza in the face of a tsunami of global protests laced with anti-Semitism.
As Biden landed in Israel to pledge U.S. military support for embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Putin was flying high to China to grandstand with Xi Jinping, who joined his calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for the “two-state solution” that would dismember the Jewish state. China had laid some of the groundwork for Russia’s current maneuverings a year ago by mediating a reestablishment of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Russia is an old hand at manipulating terrorism. Throughout the cold war, the Soviet KGB and military intelligence service (GRU) backed armed movements around the world. Highly sensitive operations were usually managed through reliable proxies, like Cuba’s DGI, the East German Stasi, and the Syrian Mukhabarat.
The Kremlin gained much political influence in the Arab world through its diplomatic and military support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). To underpin Russia’s hold on the Palestinian movement, the KGB colluded with Syria to activate “rejectionist” factions, such as Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (led by a Syrian intelligence officer), which systematically sabotaged Western efforts to promote peace talks with Israel with embassy bombings and targeted assassinations.
The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed the PLO’s mainstream al-Fatah movement, backed by moderate Arad states, to sign the Oslo Accords that established the Palestinian Authority now governing Israel’s West Bank. The extremists turned to Iran, which formed Hamas in Gaza.
Putin has taken up from where the Soviet empire left off, backing a new generation of Palestinian terrorists more vicious, more fanatical, and better organized than its predecessors. Analysts compare Hamas with ISIS, which has been largely decimated by concerted U.S. counterterrorism operations that did not account for a Russian godfather on the U.N. Security Council.
Expanded production of missiles and killer drones with enhanced stealth capacity and other improvements that are being engineered at new Russian-Iranian arms factories may also be generating surpluses that could enable Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups to supplant their WWII-era vintage Katyushas and homemade rockets for ever-more-deadly attacks.’
A U.S. destroyer patrolling the Red Sea intercepted Shahed drones and cruise missiles fired on Israel by Houthi militias from Yemen this week. But localized responses may not be enough this time. America and its allies need to look at a wider map. They should hold Russia and Iran responsible for any upgrade of terrorist capabilities and hit Putin back where it hurts him the most — in Ukraine.
Martin Arostegui is a terrorism analyst who has reported from conflict zones around the world for various news organizations, including Voice of America, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Times, the London Times, and Diario las Américas. He is the author of a book on Special Forces called Twilight Warriors (Bloomsbury, St Martin’s).
