{"id":92365,"date":"2021-01-28T08:07:31","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=92365"},"modified":"2021-01-28T08:07:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:07:31","slug":"auto-draft-466","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2021\/01\/28\/auto-draft-466\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts: Iran Eyes Reuniting Its ‘Axis of Resistance’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Ongoing talks about restoring ties between the Syrian government and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are part of a new attempt by Iran to revitalize a regional alliance, some experts say.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nIran and its proxy militia groups in the Middle East refer to their alliance as the \u201cAxis of Resistance.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nIn a recent interview with the pro-Iranian television channel al-Mayadeen, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, praised Tehran\u2019s ongoing efforts to maintain relations with all its allies.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nNasrallah said in the interview he met the Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, several times during the latter\u2019s visit to Lebanon last September. Haniyeh traveled to Lebanon to attend the Palestinian faction\u2019s secretaries-general meeting. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nHamas is an Islamic militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. Despite its Sunni ideology, it has maintained a close relationship with Iran, a regional Shiite power.
\n\u00a0
\nFor years, Hamas had offices in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and received support from the Syrian government, another major Iranian ally.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nTies between Hamas and the Syrian government were severed in 2012, however, following the group\u2019s criticism of the crackdown by Damascus on anti-government protesters.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nUnder pressure from the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hamas leaders left Damascus.
\n\u00a0
\nNasrallah said during his recent meetings with Haniyeh that they discussed mending the ties between Damascus and Hamas. He said, \u201cthere is a very positive atmosphere\u201d and Hamas\u2019 \u201crelations with the Syrian regime will be restored, but it is not easy.\u201d \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nBoth Hamas and Hezbollah are designated as terrorist organizations by the United States, while Syria is considered a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nNormalization factor\u00a0<\/strong> \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nIn the wake of the recent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, experts say Tehran will intensify its efforts to fix broken ties in its regional alliance to face new realities in the Middle East.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cIran considers that normalizing relations with Israel is an opportunity to reunite the \u2018Axis of Resistance\u2019 in the region,\u201d said Emad Chidiac, a Lebanon-based analyst and journalist.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nChidiac added that with Hamas vehemently opposed to the Abraham Accords, Iran believes it can exploit the situation by bringing Hamas closer within its regional alliance.
\n\u00a0
\nSponsored by the U.S., the normalization deals between Israel and the Arab countries are collectively called the Abraham Accords. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nExpanding the \u2018Axis\u2019 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nDespite ideological and political differences, Iran and Hezbollah have managed to maintain their strategic relationship with Hamas. Some experts say their shared animosity toward Israel is what has kept their alliance intact.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cWhat the Iranians along with Hezbollah tried to do is compartmentalize two different conflicts [Syrian war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict], that they realized that Hamas has its own local prerogatives and its own factors to deal with, and this is something that Iran gives to its proxies,\u201d said David Daoud, a research analyst on Hezbollah at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a U.S.-based advocacy group. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nDespite news reports about Russia\u2019s plans to push Iran and its proxies out of Syria, Daoud said, Moscow has no intention of dealing with the Syrian conflict on its own.
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cThe Iranians and the Russians are working in tandem on reconsolidating Syria, ostensibly under Russian control, but really under Iran\u2019s control,\u201d he told VOA. \u201cI think they are moving toward a phase to put the Syrian civil war behind them and put aside their differences and reunify the ranks in a broader resistance axis, which will include Hamas.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nLast week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a press conference that Moscow will not allow Syria to be an arena for a conflict between Israel and Iran. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nLavrov\u2019s comments came after a series of Israeli airstrikes reportedly targeted Iranian forces and weapons warehouses in eastern Syria. The strikes killed 40 Iran-backed fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nHamas\u2019 reluctance \u00a0<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nDespite ongoing efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to restore relations with the Syrian government, some experts contend Hamas could lose significant support locally if it were to opt for a full restoration of relations with Damascus.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nThis, analysts say, is because thousands of Palestinian refugees remain in the custody of the Syrian government and areas where Hamas is concentrated intensely felt the impact of government attacks in the early years of the war.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u201cIt is a very difficult decision to make, especially when there are many Palestinians displaced and imprisoned by the Syrian regime,\u201d analyst Chidiac said, underscoring that under such circumstances the \u201cPalestinians will not accept a restoration of relations with the Syrian regime.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nThe Action Group for the Palestinians of Syria, a Britain-based watchdog, has documented 1,780 Palestinians in Syrian prisons since 2011. The group says the 560,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria are not able to secure their daily basic needs, noting the war in Syria has displaced 270,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nThe Yarmouk Camp, the largest Palestinian refugee community in Syria, remained besieged by Syrian government forces for five years after it was captured by rebel groups.\u00a0 \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nThe siege ended in 2018 and the remaining Palestinians were displaced to northern Syria. The camp was home to about 160,000 Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Ongoing talks about restoring ties between the Syrian government and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are part of a new attempt by Iran to revitalize a regional alliance, some experts say.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Iran and its proxy militia groups in the Middle East refer to their alliance as the \u201cAxis of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92368,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92365\/revisions\/92368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}