Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, June 21, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA via Reuters

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a US-designated terrorist organization, said on Wednesday that Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel was revenge for the 2020 assassination of IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike — a claim swiftly denied by Hamas.

“The Al-Aqsa Flood was one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani by the US and the Zionists,” Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif as telling reporters, using the Hamas terror group’s name for its cross-border invasion.

“Certainly, these acts of revenge will continue in different times and places,” Sharif added.

Soleimani was the head of the IRGC’s elite Quds force branch, which is responsible for Iran’s proxies and terror operations abroad, before he was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in 2020. He is revered by the Islamic Republic as a martyr and is commemorated across the country.

Hamas quickly denied Iran’s claims about the Oct. 7 onslaught, in which Palestinian terrorists from Gaza murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 240 others as hostages.

The terror group said in a statement that it attacked Israel due to “the dangers threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” referring to a major Islamic site on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.

“Hamas denies the validity of the remarks given by the spokesperson of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Ramadan Sharif, regarding the operation of the Flood of Al-Aqsa and its motives,” the group said.

“We have repeatedly confirmed the motives and reasons for the operation of the Flood of al-Aqsa, and foremost are the dangers that threaten Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement continued. “We also confirm that all acts of Palestinian resistance come in response to the Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites.”

Hamas’ response was striking given that the Palestinian terror group’s main international sponsor is Iran. Indeed, the Iranian government for years has provided funds, weapons, and training to Hamas terrorists, who rule Gaza. According to reports, hundreds of fighters affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terror group in Gaza, trained in Iran leading up to the Oct. 7 massacre.

US officials have described Iran as “complicit” in the Oct. 7 attacks, but have not said that the regime in Tehran ordered the operation.

In Sharif’s remarks on Wednesday, he also vowed “harsh revenge” for the killing of Iranian Brig. Gen. Razi Mousavi in a military strike in Syria on Monday. Iran blamed Israel for Mousavi’s death.