Hamas denies Iranian claim that Oct. 7 attack was in retaliation for 2020 killing of Gen. Soleimani

Hamas on Wednesday is pushing back against a claim from a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who said that the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel was launched in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.

The paramilitary guard's spokesman Ramezan Sharif made the comments at a news conference where he threatened retaliation for the killing of another top Iranian military figure, Gen. Razi Mousavi, who was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

Sharif said that the Oct. 7 attack was “one of the acts of revenge by the resistance front against the U.S. and the Zionists for the assassination of the martyr Soleimani," who was the leader of the Guards' elite Quds Force.

But Hamas in a statement denied Sharif’s characterization and said the Oct. 7 operation was launched in response to purported threats to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and to the “Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites.”