Iran Blames Trump for October 7 Hamas Attack in Israel

The October 7 attack by militant group Hamas that killed more than a thousand Israelis and has led to continued fighting in Gaza was in part a response to the United States killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, according to a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Soleimani was the commander of the Quds Force between 1998 and 2020, when he was killed by U.S. forces via drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq as he was scheduled to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

President Donald Trump, who ordered the killing without notifying top members of Congress, was called reckless by some but defended the decision by calling Soleimani a “terrorist,” a term also used by presidential candidate Joe Biden.

On October 7, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest airstrikes against Gaza. As of Wednesday, at least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, the Associated Press reported, citing the Israeli government. More than 20,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, about 70 percent of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, AP said.

Multiple reports on Wednesday cited a statement made by IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif, who connected Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood—the name for the October 7 mission—to Soleimani, referring to it as “one of the revenges” for the U.S. killing.

Hamas has rejected Iran’s notion that Soleimani’s killing was some sort of impetus for retribution.

“We deny what was conveyed by a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guards regarding the operation and its motives,” Hamas said in a release. “We emphasized several times the motives, with the primary one being the threats posed to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Any response from the Palestinian resistance is a reaction to occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people and holy sites.”

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Pentagon via email for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Israeli State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said on Wednesday that his country is looking into everything that led to the October 7 attack.

“The nature of the massacre, its repercussions and the failures emerging in connection with it to this day, as well as our moral and ethical duty to the fallen, the wounded, the kidnapped and the soldiers who put their lives on the line and fight to defend their homeland…require the state comptroller’s scrutiny of the personal responsibility of all ranks—civilian, military and governmental,” Englman said, according to Haaretz.

Sharif also said the IRGC is “well aware” of the reasons Israel killed IRGC adviser Sayyed Razi Mousavi in an airstrike near the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Monday.

The IRGC remains defiant that Mousavi’s death, described as “an act of terror,” would not hinder its campaign “against the Zionist entity,” according to The Times of Israel.

“We will respond accordingly, directly or indirectly through the resistance axis,” Sharif said.

Gordon Gray, the Kuwait professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula affairs at George Washington University and U.S. ambassador to Tunisia from 2009 until 2012, worked in the region for much of his career.

“I doubt the IRGC’s purported claim that the drone strike that killed Soleimani motivated the October 7 attacks by Hamas,” Gray told Newsweek via email on Wednesday. “Making the claim so long after the terror attacks undermines the credibility of the assertion.”

The IDF has a preponderant military advantage in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, he added. Long-term questions remain, however, including how the military side of the conflict concludes and the global political implications.

“I don’t think that there’s any question that Israel, like any country, has a right to self-defense,” Gray said. “That’s a concept that’s enshrined in the UN [United Nations] charter.

“I think the October 7 terrorist attacks provided just cause for the subsequent Israeli military operations, just as the 9/11 attacks provided justification for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.”

Mousavi was reportedly described by Iranian state television as “among those accompanying Qassem Soleimani.”

Israel will “certainly pay the price” for Mousavi’s death, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement, calling it “a sign of the Zionist regime’s frustration and weakness in the region.”

“I will not comment on various actions we take,” IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi told reporters near Gaza following Mousavi’s death, according to The Jerusalem Post. “The IDF is working together with other security organizations throughout the Middle East, within the borders of the state, around the borders of the state.

“We take whatever action necessary to make it very clear that we are very determined to defend the country, are willing to go far.”