World
World
This would have been Haniyeh’s first public meeting with a senior government official since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel just a week ago, which has already claimed at least 1,400 lives in the Hebrew state.
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AP
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hosein Amir Abdolahian met with the leader of the political office of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, this Saturday during his visit to Qatar, Qatari television AlJazeera reported.
The television channel did not provide any details about the meeting, but broadcast images of Abdolahian and Haniyeh, who lives in Doha and heads the Islamist movement’s political office from there, with the approval of the Qatari government, which considers Hamas a valid interlocutor in the Gaza Strip and has been home to its headquarters for a decade.
The Iranian diplomatic chief’s visit to Qatar also comes a day after that of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
This would have been Haniyeh’s first public meeting with a senior government official since Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel just a week ago, which left 1,400 dead in the Hebrew state and sparked a strong reaction against the Gaza Strip, where there have already been more than 2,200 deaths.
The Hamas leader had already spoken by phone with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on October 7 to discuss “the events in Palestine,” according to Iranian media, which did not provide any further information about the conversation between the two politicians.
Tehran is one of the main allies of the Islamist movement Hamas and leads the socalled Axis of Resistance against the Jewish state, its enemy.
Iran greeted Hamas’s operation against Israel with congratulations and fireworks in the streets of the Iranian capital.