Iran voiced support for President Donald Trump‘s Gaza peace plan, a move that further pressures Hamas to abide by the peace deal.
In a statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it would welcome any ceasefire decision that ensured “halting the genocide,” but repeatedly stressed that the decision was up to Palestinians. It also couched its support with demands that global organizations pursue legal actions against Israeli officials and fast-track aid into Gaza.
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“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers any decision in this regard to be within the authority of the Palestinian people and resistance,” the ministry said in a statement.
It added that ending the war “does not negate the responsibility of governments and competent international institutions to pursue legal and judicial action against the crimes of the Zionist regime,” including trying Israeli officials for war crimes.
The ministry also expressed its willingness to take part in humanitarian relief efforts.
Iran’s show of support for the peace deal lends it key legitimacy, given Tehran’s status as Hamas’s only major state ally. Hamas has received most of its weapons from Tehran, though the flow has been cut off due to the war.
The announcement comes as Israeli and Hamas negotiators meet in Egypt to iron out the details of Trump’s 20-point peace deal. Hamas agreed to most of the points in the deal, including handing over the governorship of the Gaza Strip to a technocratic Palestinian body. However, it voiced reservations about others, such as disarmament.
Reports suggest that Trump strong-armed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting the deal after the Israeli leader initially argued that Hamas was trying to weasel out of the terms. Trump, angered at Netanyahu over Israel’s strike on Qatar, a U.S. ally, threatened to cut support for Israel’s war in Gaza if he rejected the deal.
An in-depth report from the Financial Times that cited several people familiar with discussions said Trump refused an Israeli edit of the plan that would allow it to continue the war if it assessed that Hamas reneged on some terms. On the other hand, Trump said he would give Israel his full blessing to destroy Hamas if it rejected the deal.
Trump viewed Hamas’s conditioned response to his peace offer as sufficient and ordered Netanyahu to “immediately” cease military operations in Gaza after its response.
When Netanyahu argued to Trump that Hamas was only using its qualified acceptance as a delaying tactic, Trump retorted, “Why are you so f***ing negative?”
Hamas’s leaders were banking on a decisive intervention from Iran and its so-called Axis of Resistance, with the possibility serving as the central part of its calculus to carry out its Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack against Israel. Iran’s actions and media reports suggest that the attack came as a surprise to Tehran, with the weakened regime failing to come to Hamas’s aid decisively. Its lackluster response allowed Israel to cripple the Axis of Resistance, batter Hezbollah in September and October 2024, position itself to aid in the fall of the Assad regime in December, then directly strike Iran in June, killing dozens of top leaders.
The Israel-Hamas war, which will have lasted almost exactly two years if the peace deal is successful, has been by far the deadliest round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, surpassing the number of deaths in every round of fighting combined since 1948.
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According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which Hamas oversees, 64,522 Palestinians have been killed in the war and another 163,096 have been wounded. Israel has denied and criticized these numbers, maintaining that most of those killed have been Hamas fighters and allies. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East reported that roughly 80% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, 1,152 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, with many of them among the nearly 1,200 killed during Hamas’s opening attack.