- In a face-to-face encounter in Tehran, Ran’s supreme leader informed Hamas’s leader that his nation would not join the Israeli war effort and charged the terror group with failing to provide any advance notice of the October 7 strikes.
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Ismail Haniyeh that Iran – a longtime backer of Hamas – would continue to lend the group its political and moral support, but would not intervene directly, according to three Iranian and Hamas officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked to remain anonymous.
- According to a Hamas official who spoke to Reuters, the supreme commander put pressure on Haniyeh to muzzle individuals inside the Palestinian organization who openly called for Iran and its potent Lebanese ally Hezbollah to fully join the fight against Israel.
- Hezbollah, too, was taken by surprise by Hamas’s devastating assault last month that killed 1,200 Israelis. Its fighters were not even on alert in villages near the border that were frontlines in its 2006 war with Israel, and had to be rapidly called up, three sources close to the Lebanese group said.
- “We woke up to a war,” said a Hezbollah commander.
- The conflict is also testing the limits of the regional coalition whose members – which include the Syrian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups from Iraq to Yemen – have differing priorities and domestic challenges.