For the first 16 days of the war, both the “resistance bloc” and Iran’s rhetoric toward what was happening in the Gaza Strip was surprising. Until July 19, Tehran’s reaction was colder than usual; no significant solidarity was witnessed in the streets, nor did officials voice their usual support to the Palestinian groups fighting Israel. The same applies to Lebanon’s Hezbollah that used to be much more involved in similar situations previously. It was only Ali Larijani, Iran’s parliament speaker, who on July 17 called both Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshaal and Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, Islamic Jihad’s secretary-general, to voice his country’s stance to support the Palestinian resistance in the war.
On July 20, a drastic change occurred. Meshaal and Shalah received another phone call, this time from Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah who indicated that the “resistance bloc” was about to start its solidarity campaign with Gaza. According to a press release by the party, Nasrallah expressed support to both groups and to the Palestinian people, as recounted by Al-Monitor’s Nasser Chararah. Since then, the support increased and reached its peak with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech on Eid al-Fitr and a few days later the letter by Quds Force leader Qassem Suleimani that was aired by the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV.
“It was a bit surprising,” said one Hamas official in an interview with Al-Monitor, “there are no doubt many differences on other issues, but we expected a warmer approach from Iran; all these years they’ve been supporting the resistance, we expected a louder voice at the start [of the crisis in Gaza].” The Hamas official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained that the Iranian role in supporting the resistance militarily continues to be invaluable and cannot be compared to any other support: “[In terms of] training and expertise, the Iranian leadership has been very supportive. This is not something to argue about, but they weren’t there as before. We hope this new wave of support that they started 10 days ago will continue because we need every word; though we understand they might have been busy with the nuclear talks that are a priority to President [Hassan] Rouhani’s administration.”
Why did Iran at first remain silent, and why did its rhetoric change two weeks later?
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