Over the past few months, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have held several coordination meetings in Beirut, in which Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad participated. They were chaired by Ismaïl Qaani, the commander of the al-Quds brigades.

The one in May 2023 was made public (photo). It brought together Hassan Nasrallah (general secretary of the Lebanese Hezbollah), Saleh al-Arouri (high-ranking leader of Hamas) and Ziad al-Nakala (commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad).

The aim of the meetings was to share experiences of the attacks carried out on Israeli territory. It was probably during these meetings that the Palestinian participants changed their conception of the war.

However, it is absurd to believe that the groups claiming to belong respectively to Imam Rouhollah Khomeini and to Hassan el-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood) have agreed to form a common military staff. Khomeini and el-Banna developed competing ideologies both of which use religion in politics. They met and divided up the world among themselves: the Shiites represent the zone of influence of the Khomeinists, the Sunnis that of the Brotherhood. This agreement is respected to the letter by the current Guide of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hezbollah fought against Hamas in the Syrian war, then mended fences with it when it admitted it had made a mistake and sent an envoy to apologize to Damascus. Both groups share the same goal of liberating Palestine, but a fundamental ethical difference separates them. Hezbollah has not joined Hamas’ operation against Israel, but is expected to do so when Tel Aviv starts applying the principles of counterinsurgency warfare.