Hamas and Iran had moved closer to each other this year, but those ties are being stretched by the bloody civil war in Syria — especially with the horrible scenes that emerged earlier this month from Aleppo, the former rebel stronghold.
Hamas, a Sunni fundamentalist movement, has always differed from Iran on the Syrian civil war. Hamas sympathizes with the Syrian rebels in their revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad — who is Iran's main ally in the region. Yet Iran has supported Hamas financially in the Palestinian struggle against Israel.