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The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood With Hamas and Iran
Former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal on Iran's Hamas strategy. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (free subscription required) fleshes out the picture even further.

The fundamental truth is that Hamas' road to Iran runs through the international Muslim Brotherhood, and has for two decades.

What is often missing in the discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood is that Hamas, according to its own founding charter, is an integral and armed part of the Ikwhan, not separate from it.

According to Article Two of the Hamas Charter:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement of modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and
judgment ,the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam."

The most open analysis of the relationship of the Brotherhood to Iran comes from the public interviews of Yousef Nada, the self-described foreign minister of international Muslim Brotherhood. Unfortunately, there is no English language link to the extraordinary series of statements he gave.

In a series of interviews he gave to al Jazeera in late 2001 and 2002, Nada described how the Ikhwan sent a delegation to Tehran immediately after Khommeini assumed power in 1979. He states that the MB delegation was the third plane to land in Tehran after the revolution-the first was Khommeni's, then security from the PLO, and then his.

As the Brother in charge of relations with Iran, he tells how his group worked with the Iranian revolutionary regime, and how he personally tried to mediate an end to the Iran-Iraq war. In these endeavor, he worked extensively with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian leadership.

Perhaps best illustrating the relationship with Iran, Nada said that, to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1991, he proposed a Muslim force to occupy Kuwait while the Iraqis withdrew.

In a Sept. 8, 2002 interview with Al Jazeera, where Nada describes his proposal for withdrawal to Saddam:

Youssef Nada: The arrangements were on the basis that it would be Malaysia, Indonesia, Sudan, Iran, under the leadership of Iran, since it was closest, and since . .

Ahmed Mansour: [interrupting] You mean the Iran that was at war with Iraq for six years.

Youssef Nada: This was an extremely important point to me. This was an opportunity to put everything in the past behind them...

Ahmed Mansour: You did all of this before going to him (Saddam-DF)?

Youssef Nada: In regards to Iran, of course, two of them would have sent symbolic units, but the army was going to be from Iran.

Ahmed Mansour: It was impossible that this would be accepted.

Of course, the interviewer was right, but the point was made-the international MB was willing to back the placing of Iranian troops in a Sunni country.

So, Iran's interest and support for Hamas is not new, nor should it be surprising. It is part of the history of the Ikhwan, of which Hamas is a part.



POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
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