Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Sunday warned the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against any “compromise” in its fight against Tehran’s nemesis Israel, his official website reported.
“Always be wary of infiltration by the compromisers in a resistance organisation, which will gradually weaken it,” Khamenei told the visiting Hamas Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, according to the leader.ir website.
“We have no doubt about your resistance and that of many of your brothers, and the people only have this expectation of you,” said Khamenei, reaffirming that Iran “will always be alongside the Palestinian resistance.” Khamenei’s comments come as divisions within Hamas have emerged on a possible overhaul of the organisation’s strategy.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal signed an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas earlier this month placing Abbas at the head of an interim government charged with organising elections later this year.
The agreement struck by Meshaal’s foreign-based leadership with Abbas’s Fatah faction has run into serious opposition from Hamas members inside the Gaza Strip, which the movement has controlled since ousting the president’s loyalists in 2007.
In November, Meshaal called for “peaceful popular resistance,” which would represent a shift in the movement away from armed struggle. He also expressed support for the establishment of a Palestinian state on territories occupied in 1967 in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as its capital.
Haniya was quoted as telling Khamenei that the goal of Hamas remained “freedom of all the Palestinian land from the (Mediterranean) sea to the (Jordan) river, the refusal of peace talks and the Islamic character of the Palestinian struggle.”
On Saturday, Haniya said in a speech in Tehran that Hamas “will never recognise Israel.”
“They want us to recognise the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinian people and in the name of all the world’s freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognise Israel,” Haniya said.
Iran speaker warns Gulf Arab states not to side with US
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani warned that his country will not forgive Gulf Arab nations if they continue backing US “plots” against Tehran, local media reported on Sunday. “We recommend to some of the countries in the region who were siding with (Iraq dictator) Saddam (Hussein) and now are siding with the US plots against the Iranian nation to give it up,” he was quoted as saying. “Iran will not forgive them again. There will be consequences in the region if new plots against our nation are carried out,” Larijani said. Larijani was referring to the generous financial aid and political support provided by Gulf Arab states, namely Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to the Iraqi regime during the 1980-1988 war against Iran. His comments come at a time when the United States and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on Iran’s central bank and oil exports in January over its controversial nuclear programme. Tehran has called on Saudi Arabia to reconsider a vow to make up for any shortfall in Iran’s oil exports due to these new sanctions, saying Riyadh’s pledge to intervene on the market was unfriendly. Long-strained ties between Shia-dominated Iran and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia deteriorated after Saudi-led troops intervened in Sunni-ruled Bahrain in March help the government there crush Shia-led pro-democracy protests. The relations worsened late last year following US allegations that a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington had been hatched in Tehran. In addition, the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have called on Iran to “stop interfering in the internal affairs” of their nations.\ The worsening ties continued after the six Gulf monarchies ordered their envoys home from Syria and expelled Damascus’s ambassadors, joining mounting pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the killings of civilians.
