Pro-actively Probing the Persian Puzzle
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US intelligence agencies aren’t sure about Iran’s operational connection to the Hamas attack:
The United States has collected multiple pieces of intelligence that show that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the Hamas attack in Israel, information that has fueled U.S. doubts that Iran played a direct role in planning the assault, according to several American officials.
These key Iranian officials did not know the attack was coming, according to the intelligence. The United States, Israel and key regional allies have not found evidence that Iran directly helped plan the attack, according to the U.S. officials and another official in the Middle East.
While they would not identify the Iranian officials who expressed surprise at the attack, the U.S. officials said they were people who typically would be aware of operations involving the Quds Force, Iran’s paramilitary arm that supports and works with proxy forces.
U.S. officials said the intelligence investigation was continuing and could turn up evidence that Iran or other states were directly involved in the Hamas operation. Senior officials said they were keeping an open mind, reviewing old intelligence reports and looking for new information.
We’re not quite to the point yet where the WSJ and NYT reports are necessarily contradictory; a great many intelligence operations depend on the compartmentalization of information, and it may be that the Iranians who will speak to US intelligence are different than the Iranians who participated in operational planning. Recollect, for instance, that much of Putin’s own army was unaware of the fact that it was about to invade Ukraine. But it definitely suggests that Iran was not “all in” on support for Hamas’ initial attack.