August 5, 2013 | Quote
Hamas Moves To Strengthen Relations With Iran, Hezbollah to Shore Up Regional Standing
Recent months have seen a percipitous decline in Hamas’s strategic and diplomatic standing. The Arab Spring and the Islamist governments that it empowered were seen as a boon to the Iran-backed terror group, but various dynamics in the region – including the Syrian conflict and the deterioration of security in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – ended uperoding its position.
An article published early last week by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, concluded that Hamas has reached a point of unprecedented vulnerability:
The PLO and the Israelis cannot agree on much, but their hatred for Hamas is mutual. And the United States can leverage this by attacking the violent Islamist faction while it is at the most vulnerable point it has been in years… The Egyptian Army’s ongoing operations against the subterranean tunnels connecting Egypt to the Gaza Strip, which have long served as key arteries for bulk cash smuggling, are wreaking havoc on Hamas’s finances. One senior Israeli security official told me that, in the current environment, an additional reduction of 20 to 30 percent in Hamas’ revenues could “destroy” the movement.