Thread by @glcarlstrom

Quick 🧵 on this @WSJ piece, which reports claims from Hamas and Hizballah that Iran "helped plan Hamas's Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light." Those claims are being used to support a narrative that is thus far unsubstantiated. wsj.com/world/middle-e…

Let's state from the outset: of course there was some Iranian role in this attack. Iran finances Hamas and Islamic Jihad, smuggles weapons to Gaza and provides technical help for building rockets and drones. To say Iran was not involved *at all* is just propaganda.

That said, Iran and its proxies are keen to promote another bit of propaganda. They call it "unity of the arenas": the idea that an array of militant groups, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, will coordinate to fight Israel.

Unity can be a bit elusive on the ground. Even Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main groups in Gaza, do not always work well together. Hizballah has a different constituency and a different set of considerations. But the narrative of a united front serves their interests.

Turning to the WSJ piece. Every Israeli I've spoken to over the past 48 hours believes this attack was planned over many months. The WSJ's sources say Iranian officers attended meetings for several weeks. In other words, the planning almost certainly predates their involvement.

The WSJ's sources also claim that Hossein Amir-Abdollahian "attended at least two of the meetings". It strains credibility a bit to think that Iran's FM, an apparatchik and the target of much surveillance, would be brought in to plan a highly secret military operation.

This stuff might seem academic. But there is a narrative taking hold: the WSJ piece proves Iran ordered and planned the attack. It doesn't prove that or even really assert that. Nor does other credible reporting. And perhaps we should be cautious about taking Hamas at face value.

There was almost certainly some coordination within the "resistance axis". Hamas would not have launched an attack of this magnitude without alerting its partners. But coordination is not the same thing as Iran giving Hamas an order to go launch a mass attack on Israel.

And to emphasize this again: just because Hamas and Hizballah claim something does not make it true. Remarkable how the same people who say "Iran's regime lies all the time" (which it does!) are willing to accept claims from Iran and its allies when they fit the right narrative.