[bitterlemons-international.org] Bruce Riedel - The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security along with their Hizbullah partners have been training key Hamas officers for years and would have had every reason to encourage them to thwart King Abdullah's Mecca accord between Hamas and Fatah and the danger it represented to their interests. It is likely the IRGC and MOIS helped with the military planning of the Hamas takeover in Gaza and may have expanded their presence in Gaza since June. Al-Qaeda also made abundantly clear its opposition to the Mecca agreement and used its position at the center of the global Sunni jihadist movement to encourage Hamas to repudiate it and to kill Mohammad Dahlan in particular. The writer is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at Brookings.
2007-08-23 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive