Tehran is “proud of [its] military support for Gaza,” Iran’s parliamentary
speaker Ali Larijani said on Wednesday.
Larijani called on Arab countries
to emulate Iran’s example and also send military aid to the Strip, according to
reports in Fars News, which is closely affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard Corps.
“We are proud to announce our support for the Palestinians
and for Hamas, and we proudly state that we will support the Palestinian people
even in the most severe circumstances,” he said.
Iran was “honored to
have aided the Palestinian people, both in material terms and militarily,” the
speaker said.
He slammed Arab countries for “sit[ing] and hold[ing]
conferences and meetings.”
“They must know that the Palestinian people do
not need meetings and lectures,” Larijani added.
Later on Wednesday,
Revolutionary Guard commander Maj.-Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said in a news
conference that Iran had transferred missile technology to Gaza.
Asked to
comment on reports that Iran has supplied the Hamas-controlled Strip with its
Fajr artillery missiles, Jafari said Tehran had “not made missiles available to
the people of Gaza.”
Instead Iran had “placed at [Gaza’s] disposal only
the technology and manufacturing knowledge of those missiles,” Jafari said,
according to the Revolutionary Guard’s official news site, Sepah
News.
The Revolutionary Guard commander also commented on reports that
Tehran was opposed to a cease-fire in Gaza.
“This report is wholly untrue
and the Islamic Republic of Iran calls for a cease-fire that would be
advantageous to the people of Gaza,” he said.
Jafari’s comments are an
overt admission that Iran has supplied Hamas with its military
technology.
The remarks come after Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman,
Rahmin Mehmanparast, refused to confirm or deny on Tuesday whether Iran had
supplied Hamas with weapons.
Tehran initially sought to distance itself
from comments made over the weekend by Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary- general
of Hezbollah - Iran’s Lebanese proxy - who congratulated Hamas for its use of
Iranian-made Fajr-5 artillery missiles.
On Monday, however, Iran’s
state-controlled Arabic language TV channel, Al-Alam, broadcasted an interview
with a senior Islamic Jihad leader, Ziyad Nakhleh, who said that Hamas had
Iranian Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets that had come from “allies and brethren in
Iran.”