Iran is trying to start a war between Hamas and Israel, in order to save the pro-Iranian dictatorship in Syria. It works like this. Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that controls Gaza (and 40 percent of the Palestinian population) has long been sponsored by Iran. But Iran also sponsors (and helped found) several of the smaller Islamic terror groups that have found sanctuary in Gaza (and the West Bank, where the rest of the Palestinians live). Much to the distress of Hamas, Iran often orders the smaller Islamic terror groups to disobey Hamas. This is most often the case when Hamas declares a ceasefire with Israel. Iran has ordered the smaller terror groups in Gaza to keep firing rockets into Israel.
This is all about taking pressure off Syria. For most of this year, a pro-democracy movement has been organizing larger and more frequent demonstrations in Syria. Despite increasingly violent response from the Syrian government, the demonstrations keep happening. Iran has sent in more weapons, and security advisors (who have developed methods to halt such demonstrations in Iran). But it hasn’t been enough, and Iran fears Syria may be turned into another anti-Iran democracy.
So the current plan is to order its client terrorist organizations in Gaza to increase rocket attacks on Israel, in the hope that this might start a war between Hamas and Israel. Such a conflict, no matter how short it might be, would distract the Arab world from Syria, and give the Syrian and Iranian thugs an opportunity to come down real hard on the demonstrators (without attracting a lot of bad publicity).
So far, neither Hamas nor Israel is biting.
