Hamas says Iran will enter war if Gaza is 'destroyed'

A senior Hamas official said allies Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah "will join the fight if Gaza faces a war of annihilation".

"They will not sit still. Israel knows it will open the gates of hell if it tries to destroy Gaza and uses unconventional weapons to do so," Ali Barakeh, a senior Hamas official, said on October 9 in Beirut, Lebanon.

Barakeh denied that Iran helped Hamas plan or "greenlight" the attack on Israel on October 7. He said Iran and Hezbollah had supported Hamas, but since the 2014 Gaza war, the group has produced its own rockets and trained fighters.

However, Hamas officials have insisted that allies such as Iran and Hezbollah will "join the battle" if Israel launches a large-scale operation to "wipe out" Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Barakeh's comments came after Israel deployed 100,000 troops to completely blockade the Gaza Strip, repeatedly bombarding the territory with airstrikes and artillery shelling and threatening to launch a "demolition operation" against Hamas in response to the group's surprise attack on southern Israel that killed hundreds of people. The Israeli military announced on October 9 that it had "complete control over the settlements" in the territory near Gaza.

Ali Barakeh, one of the exiled Hamas officials, gives an interview in Beirut, Lebanon on October 9. Photo: AP

According to Barakeh, the offensive, dubbed al-Aqsa Storm, was planned by a number of senior Hamas commanders in Gaza. "Only a few Hamas military commanders knew about the start time of the offensive," he said, adding that even the closest allies were not informed of the timing of the operation.

Iran's Foreign Ministry also denied on October 9 that Tehran supported Hamas in attacking Israel. The White House said it had not found evidence of Iran's involvement in the war.

Hamas officials also denied that the operation had been planned for more than a year to prevent the US from persuading Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. He said the cause of the operation was provocations by the far-right Israeli government. Hamas also believed that Israel planned to assassinate its top commanders.

Israeli soldiers at a position near the Gaza Strip on October 9. Photo: AP

Bakareh said Hamas itself was shocked by the rapid development of the operation, as it had expected Israel to stop or limit the attack. Hamas had planned for only about 1,000 fighters to enter Israel by land, sea and paragliders.

"We were surprised by that collapse," he said. "We planned only to win a partial victory and take prisoners for exchange. Their army was just a paper tiger."

Bakareh warned that Hamas had only used 2,000 fighters to carry out the campaign, and that the group still had a 40,000-strong army in Gaza alone. "We are well prepared for the war and are ready for all scenarios, including a prolonged war," he said.

Meanwhile, Israel has declared a total war and will punish Hamas on an "unprecedented" scale. Israel has called up 300,000 reservists and mentioned the possibility of launching a ground campaign against Gaza, even taking control of the area.