Hamas is seeking to mend ties with Syria and Iran according to policy brief written Thursday by Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Alfoneh cited an interview Hamas spokesman, Osama Hamdan, gave to an Iranian news agency.

Speaking to Iran’s ISNA news agency, Hamas international affairs spokesman Osama Hamdan expressed hope that the group’s leader Khaled Mashal would soon visit Tehran to discuss “hostile acts of the Zionist regime towards al-Aqsa Mosque.” The rest of the interview, however, discloses the real purpose of Hamdan’s presence in Iran: normalizing Hamas’s relations with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

“Our relations with the Syrians are not severed,” Hamdan said, crediting Syria for being a “pillar of the ‘resistance’” against Israel. The spokesman dismissed the regime’s brutal crackdown against its own people (most of them from Hamas’s own Sunni Muslim population) as “an internal issue,” and said the Hamas leadership had left its home base in Damascus in January 2012 because of “practical reasons” rather than any dispute with the regime. He took pains to emphasize the guiding principle in Hamas’ foreign relations: “Our policy is based on [a state’s] position towards the Palestine issue.”

According to reports, Hamas was one of several Middle Eastern Shi’ite militias and terror groups that gathered last week “to rebuild Tehran’s alliance in the Middle East and develop ways to confront U.S. involvement in the region.” Hamas for its part is attempting to regain its status as a major client of the Islamic Republic by “[providing] all the necessary pledges of obedience to the Iranian leadership, particularly regarding an expected announcement of an explicit declaration of Hamas’s position towards the ongoing conflict in Syria . Ties between the terror group and Iran were strained due to Hamas’ backing of rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As a result Iran cut much of its funding to Hamas.

Also last week it was reported that Imad al-Alami, a Hamas official with strong ties to Iran, is now operating openly in Turkey.

Even with its strained ties with Hamas, a shipment of arms from Iran was intercepted by Israel in March on is way to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. A few months later a report from the United Nations identified Iran as a source for Hamas’ arsenal.

[Photo: IslamAgainstTheWorld / YouTube ]