Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar wrote to the foreign operations division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in 2021 requesting payments of $500 million to carry out an attack on Israel, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said.
“Deif and Sinwar demanded $500 million from the Quds Force commander to support the annihilation of Israel and the fight against the US – and they got it,” Katz said during a visit to an intelligence unit of the Israel Defence Forces over the weekend.
“This is definitive proof of Iran‘s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel and for the October 7 massacre,” he said, referring to documents and transcripts of conversations recovered by IDF units from Hamas tunnels.
Katz posted on his X account a letter in Arabic, dated 5 June 2021, that appeared to show Deif, Sinwar and Marwan Issa requesting $500 million from Iran in June 2021, in instalments of $20 million a month.
“Today I am presenting, for the first time, a transcript of conversations found in the tunnels of senior Hamas officials in Gaza, which proves a direct connection between Iran and Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, as part of Iran’s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel,” Katz said during his visit to the AMASHT unit - a special unit established after October 7.
He said that the head of the Quds Force’s Palestinian Affairs Branch responded affirmatively to the request, saying that despite Iran’s dire economic situation and the hardships faced by the Iranian people, the regime would continue funding Hamas, because the fight against Israel and the US remained the regime’s top priority.
“Iran is the head of the snake,” Katz said. “Despite all its denials, it continues to finance and promote terrorism across all fronts – from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria to the West Bank, and now even with the Houthis in Yemen – all under the banner of Israel’s destruction.
“Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and will continue to strike at its proxies across the region until the Iranian axis of evil is dismantled and defeated.”
