On Monday, Iran dismissed as untrue claims that Tehran participated in the major attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas.
“The accusations linked to an Iranian role… are based on political reasons,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told reporters.
The Islamic republic, he said, does not intervene “in the decision-making of other countries, including Palestine”.
Under cover of a large rocket bombardment, Palestinian militants from the Hamas islamist organization, which is backed by Iran and governs the Gaza Strip, infiltrated Israel early on Saturday.
Over 1,100 people have died in the conflict so far, with the Palestinians accounting for 430 deaths and Israel reporting over 700.
One of the first nations to applaud the Hamas attack was Iran, which does not recognize Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a focal point of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Palestinians had “the necessary capacity and will to defend their nation and recover their rights” without any help from Tehran, Kanani said.
“Talking about an Iranian role aims at turning public opinion (away from the facts) and at justifying the potential future actions” of Israel, the spokesman added.
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations also denied allegations the Islamic republic had any role in the Hamas attack, in a statement issued overnight.
It came after the Wall Street Journal reported 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 Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, stated on Sunday that his country supported the Palestinians’ right to self-defense and that Israel needed to be held responsible for harming the area.
Raisi who has spoken with the leaders of Hamas and the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad group since the Hamas attack also urged Muslim governments to “support the Palestinian nation”.
A US official said Sunday it was too soon to say if Iran was “directly” involved in the Hamas attack, adding however that there was little doubt that Hamas was “financed, equipped and armed” by countries including Iran.
