No effort is being made to cloak the warming of relations between Hamas and Iran in a veil of secrecy. A key figure in this budding rapprochement is senior Hamas official Salah al-Arouri, who was expelled from Turkey two years ago after Jerusalem and Ankara reached a reconciliation agreement. Photos from Aug. 2 show Arouri meeting in Beirut with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, special assistant for international affairs to Iran's Shura Council. Also in attendance were Osama Hamdan, Hamas' point man for international relations, and Ali Barakeh, the movement's representative in Lebanon.

After the meeting, Arouri flew straight to Tehran, where he joined a high-level Hamas delegation attending the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani for a second term. Arouri, Hamdan and Izzat al-Rishq held a series of meetings with top Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, senior adviser to the supreme leader on international affairs Ali Akbar Velayati and Strategic Committee for Foreign Policy Chairman Kamal Kharazi.

On Aug. 6, Barakeh released a statement announcing that Hamas' political bureau head, Ismail Haniyeh, would soon be visiting Iran and that Hamas and Iran were allies again. “Iran sees continuation of resistance in Palestine as a vital issue and Hamas, too, knows that relations with Iran would strengthen the Palestinian resistance,” said Barakeh. What this means is that Hamas has chosen military and economic aid to rearm itself at the expense of Gaza residents, who believed that improved relations with Egypt offered the best hope of easing the siege in any significant way. When Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' leader in Gaza and an advocate of rapprochement with Tehran, met with Gaza journalists Aug. 28, he informed them that ties with Iran had been renewed.

Also on Aug. 28, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met with Israel's coordinator of activities in the occupied territories, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, to discuss the possible easing of the closure against Gaza to prevent a humanitarian crisis. The answer he received was that Israel is doing everything it can to provide for the needs of the civilian population and ease restrictions on them, while Hamas is blocking all attempts to improve the lives of Gaza's people. “The Hamas terrorist organization takes advantage of the people of Gaza again and again in an effort to exploit Israeli aid, despite the difficulties in Gaza,” Mordechai told Guterres.