Ayatollah Khamenei > Tasnim News, CC BY 4.0; via Wikimedia Commons
The leaders of Palestinian terror groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas were in Tehran yesterday for talks with top Iranian officials.
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi received Islamic Jihad chief Ziad Nakhaleh, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the newly appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
“The most efficient way to end the more than 75 years of occupation of Palestine is resistance”, Ahmadian told Haniyeh.
Nakhalah has reportedly been in Iran since last week, and has met both Raisi and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Raisi told Nakhaleh that Israel was seeking to normalise ties with more Muslim countries “to discourage young Palestinians from [seeking to] liberate the occupied territories”, as he hailed Palestinian “resistance” against Israel.
In 2020, the Abraham Accords normalised diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan.
Iran is the major supporter of Palestinian terrorism internationally, as well as funding terror groups elsewhere, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran’s leaders have repeatedly expressed their desire to see Israel destroyed, with significant concerns in Jerusalem around Tehran’s continued efforts to develop a nuclear programme.