Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar said in a recent interview that soon after his first meeting with Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander wound up giving him $22 million to take back with him to the Gaza Strip.
Speaking with Iran’s Al-Alam TV on Dec. 27, al-Zahar—Hamas’s foreign minister at the time the incident took place—related that Soleimani would have given him more, but that $22 million was all the nine-person Hamas delegation could carry. “Each suitcase weighed 40 kilograms [88 pounds],” he said.
After he was appointed foreign minister in 2006, said al-Zahar, “I traveled to a number of countries, one of which was Iran. I met with the [Iranian] foreign minister and then some Iranian officials.”
He also met with Iran’s president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That meeting, said al-Zahar, was “a positive one.”
“The decision was taken immediately. I was supposed to fly out the following day,” he continued. “I discovered $22 million waiting for me in suitcases at the airport. We had agreed on a larger sum, but there were only nine of us, and this was all we could carry.”