Jeremy Scahill

I mean, that's a question that many Palestinians have asked me.

I also discussed this the other day with Hassan Ahmadian, who's one of the most well-known Iran analysts.

And, you know, the answers that I've been given when I've talked to Iranian officials about this, just as someone who's really immersed in covering Gaza, I found them to be

unsatisfying answers, but I understand them.

Iran says that this is more complicated than Lebanon because the Palestinian factions signed an agreement with Trump and with Israel, that there's a United Nations Security Council resolution that is governing the so-called

that there is a separate track of negotiations that is happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis via the Board of Peace.

Yes, the Iranians are watching and they are extremely opposed to this and say that they're in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, but they're saying that it would require an entire separate diplomatic track and that they don't have the leverage to also put Gaza and the war under its umbrella.

And one Iranian official said to me, so if we were to start doing this,

What do we say about illegal settlements?

What do we say about the siege and the forced displacement in the occupied West Bank?

It's not that we don't want to do this.

It's that in order to do that, it requires a whole other front.

And what they're saying is we're going to get to that.

But Hezbollah actively entered the war front on March 2nd.

by attacking Israel in response to the aggression against Iran.

And also, the myth of Iran being the kind of primary backer of Hamas, it's just false that Iran is somehow some puppet master controlling Hamas.

Hamas and Hezbollah have a very different relationship to Iran.

I think the Iranians also came to a point where they felt like this was D-Day.

And if they didn't draw a red line in defending and having a joint front with Hezbollah and the southern resistance in Lebanon, that they were essentially ceding that territory in perpetuity to the Israelis.

The situation with the Palestinians in Gaza is unspeakably horrifying.