The Future of Hamas Passes Through Tehran

What will become of Hamas after the end of its war against Israel? Given the organization’s ties to and support from Iran, its long-term future remains connected to the broader issue of Tehran’s role in the Middle East. The future connection of Iran to whatever remains of Hamas will overshadow any short- or medium-term scenarios in the Hamas-Israel war. If the United States is serious about eliminating the threat presented by Hamas to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Middle East stability, the United States must acknowledge the centrality of Iran’s destabilizing activities across the region and address it seriously.

Israel is not yet presenting a coherent scenario regarding the postwar governance of Gaza—beyond being clear about who Israel does not want to govern Gaza: the leadership of the military wing of Hamas. Israel is framing its assault on Gaza as necessary for the achievement of the objective of eradicating this military leadership, which in more concrete terms likely means the pursuit and killing of figures like Yehia Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza Strip leader; Mohammed Sinwar, a military operations leader; Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; and Saleh al-Arouri, the brigades’ co-founder.

But as was the case with other militant groups connected to Iran, decapitating a group by eliminating its military leaders does not result in the group’s dissolution. The killing of Hezbollah leaders did not cause that organization to collapse, nor did the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force dissolve after the killing of its chief, Qassem Suleimani. The Iran-supported Popular Mobilization Forces are also still in existence in Iraq, despite the killing of the group’s deputy head and most powerful figure, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

For as long as Iran regards these militant groups as necessary to its regional influence, it will continue to support them and allow them to regenerate themselves after military setbacks and leadership losses. Although Hamas is not Iran’s most important regional asset, Tehran will not give up its Palestinian cards easily. After all, it is the Palestinian cause that Iran uses as an excuse for its support of militant groups across the Middle East, presenting those groups as part of an “axis of resistance” against U.S. imperialism and Zionism.

Iran is not the only country that has benefited from Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported Hamas’s rule in Gaza to bolster his political standing within Israel. Despite Egypt’s antagonism toward the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, Cairo sees Hamas as a useful security actor that has managed to keep the military dynamics in Gaza from spilling across the border and creating instability inside Egypt. Cairo will not readily accept an alternative to Hamas unless it comes with credible security guarantees.

Despite Israel’s hard-line rhetoric about Hamas, if it succeeds in eliminating Hamas’s military leaders in the short term, a medium-term scenario of Arab-Israeli acceptance of a minor role for a reformed version of Hamas is not far-fetched. Such an iteration of Hamas would be in line with the statement issued following the joint Arab League-Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Riyadh earlier this month. The statement emphasizes recognizing only the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of Palestinians—but also states that all other Palestinian factions should operate “under a PLO-led national partnership.”

At first glance, the national partnership proposed in the Arab League-OIC statement appears more nuanced than the usual power-sharing arrangements among ruling elites that are a common feature of conflict resolution in the region. The proposal is not calling for power sharing between the PLO and Hamas. Rather, the idea is that Hamas—or at least its pragmatic elements—agrees to operate as a subsidiary political actor under the umbrella of the PLO. In theory, this kind of arrangement could mitigate the power abuses and political paralysis that elite bargains have frequently created in places like Lebanon, Iraq, or Libya.

Whether Hamas will go along with this plan is questionable. One of Hamas’s objectives in the Oct. 7 assault on Israel was to highlight the weakness of the PLO and Palestinian Authority, affirming that Hamas is the only true voice of the Palestinian people. Hamas will not want to be seen as having made a huge political compromise.

Some figures from the political leadership of Hamas who are abroad—especially the group’s Qatar-based political leader, Ismail Haniyeh—will likely accept becoming a part of the proposed national partnership. On Nov. 9, Haniyeh led a delegation that included the leader of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, to meet with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel in Cairo. Haniyeh has also been involved in discussions with other Arab countries. Behind-the-scenes talks among Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since the war started point to the plausibility of Haniyeh playing the role of Hamas representative in a new Palestinian political coalition that would extend the rule of the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank to Gaza.

With Hamas enjoying popular support among Palestinians despite documented criticism of Hamas’s governance by the residents of Gaza before Oct. 7, forming this Palestinian national partnership would avoid the complete exclusion of Hamas from power. The political exclusion of Hamas could cause anger among some hardcore supporters and turn them into an insurgency with continued support from Iran—a scenario Arab states are aware of and wish to avert. For Tehran, on the other hand, minimal representation for Hamas in a future Palestinian coalition will not suffice.

Even if a figure like Haniyeh agrees to compromise and Hamas is drastically weakened militarily, the proposed PLO-led coalition is only a medium-term scenario. In the longer term, it is highly unlikely that an Iran-backed group such as Hamas would limit its ambition to a minor role in power.

Hamas’s founding charter was firm in its rejection of the existence of Israel and the two-state solution. Hezbollah’s founding charter was similarly rejectionist of the Lebanese secular state. Both groups revised their charters later on. Hamas’s new charter of 2017 gives tacit agreement to the formation of a Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders, which was echoed by Haniyeh in his recent remarks about accepting the two-state solution. Hezbollah gradually began integrating into Lebanese state institutions as a political actor, taking part in parliamentary elections since 1992 and becoming part of the government. Hezbollah’s revised manifesto of 2009 presents the group as a political player within the Lebanese state.

But parallel to Hezbollah’s gradual integration into the Lebanese state, the group escalated its intimidation of political opponents as part of a long-term power-grab strategy. In 2008, this resulted in a de facto change in the Lebanese constitution, whereby Hezbollah was granted official legitimacy as an armed defender of Lebanon operating separately from the Lebanese Armed Forces. Since then, Hezbollah has continued its aggressive pursuit of power, and today it is the leading political force in Lebanon. Even if it chose a pragmatic path to power, it has not given up on its ambition to control Lebanese politics and advance Iran’s regional influence.

The story of Hezbollah illustrates that Iran-backed groups will not be satisfied with a minor political role in the long term. If Iran keeps backing them, they will take advantage of their presence in power to act as spoilers and claim greater clout. As long as Iran remains in the picture as their supporter, those groups remain Iranian influence tools no matter how pragmatic they may appear.

If the joint Arab League-OIC statement proposal can be implemented, it would be only a medium-term solution. It would give Arab countries and Israel time to engage in a revived peace process under the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. It maintains Egypt’s security ties with Gaza and Qatar’s political ties with the pragmatic elements of Hamas. And it allows Saudi Arabia to resume normalization talks with Israel.

Iran, on the other hand, does not want the Israel-Palestine conflict to be resolved. And it will not want to see the Palestinian Authority make political gains at the expense of Hamas, especially after Hamas stated that its Oct. 7 attack succeeded in “putting the Palestinian issue back on the table.” Another likely reason for the timing and brutality of Hamas’s attack was to torpedo normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, to which Iran is firmly opposed.

Even if Hamas is reduced to a rump organization in Gaza, Iran will weaponize local grievances to resurrect a version of Hamas in the long run. Like the pre-war Hamas, the new Iran-backed version will continue to be a spoiler. This is similar to Hezbollah in the early 1980s: When, in 1984, Israel-linked operatives killed Ragheb Harb, a key leader of the Shiite resistance, Hezbollah was still in its formative phase. By the following year, Hezbollah had issued its first charter and developed into a more coherent organization thanks to a mixture of local grievances and Iranian commitment.

While countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are engaged in various forms of de-escalation with Iran, neither of those countries is naïve about the threat that Iran poses to its interests in the region. Their de-escalation efforts are, to a large degree, driven by U.S. disengagement on the issue of Iran’s role in the Middle East, which has left those Arab countries alone in finding ways to reduce tension with Iran in the absence of alternatives.

Washington must take advantage of the Arab League-OIC statement to buy time to develop, together with its Arab allies, a comprehensive strategy toward Iran that puts Iran’s nuclear enrichment, ballistic missile program, regional interventions, and proxy groups in the same priority file—and connect that file to the Israel-Palestine peace process. Only by addressing the Iranian role in this comprehensive way can there be more clarity about what happens to Hamas after the war.