Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf says the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas will excel under its new political chief, Khalil al-Hayya.
In a message issued Tuesday to congratulate Hayya on his appointment as head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Qalibaf said the election of the new Hamas leader had emerged from “fire and blood,” referring to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, where Hamas is based.
Hayya will continue the path of two previous holders of the post, namely Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, he said.
“Drawing upon the political and jihadist legacy of Martyr Haniyeh and the unshakeable will of Martyr Sinwar, I am confident that you will keep the banner of resistance raised ever more proudly before the occupiers,” said the Iranian Parliament speaker.
Haniyeh was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in the Iranian capital Tehran in July 2024 as he was attending the inauguration ceremony of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Sinwar was martyred in Gaza in October the same year while fighting Israeli forces on the field.
Qalibaf described Haniyeh and Sinwar as two “unwavering heroes” whose martyrdom had marked “the starting point of a new chapter of sacred fury of the Palestinian people against Zionism.”
Iran, Qalibaf said, will continue to stand alongside Hamas’s leadership and all Palestinian warriors fighting on the field, as part of its policy to serve the primary cause of the Islamic Ummah, the liberation of the holy al-Quds from Israeli occupation.
Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip, a narrow piece of land on the Mediterranean home to more than two million Palestinians, since 2007.
The group has a leader based in Gaza and a head of the political bureau who is mostly based abroad and regulates the group’s relations with foreign governments and entities.
