Hamas asked Iran to stop fighting the way they are fighting. They publicly asked “our brothers in Iran not to target neighboring countries.” Hamas urged “all countries in the region to cooperate to stop this aggression and preserve the bonds of brotherhood.” They affirmed Iran’s right to fight US and Israeli aggression, but not to attack its neighboring countries. As Shanaka states, it’s a “distress call.”
Iran has struck the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia and fired toward Oman and Qatar since 28 February. Every one of these countries hosts or helps Palestinians. The proxies need the countries Iran is attacking in order to survive. The “argument is about whether the war is destroying the alliance the war was designed to defend.”
For Hamas to state this publicly is very serious from their perspective.
Shanaka’s Statement:
BREAKING: Hamas just told Iran to stop. The organisation that Iran armed, funded, trained, and deployed as the southern blade of the Axis of Resistance has issued a public statement calling on “our brothers in Iran not to target neighboring countries” and urging “all countries in the region to cooperate to stop this aggression and preserve the bonds of brotherhood.” Al Jazeera Arabic and Palestinian media confirmed the statement. Hamas has not denied it. No Axis member has contradicted it.
The most important fracture of the 2026 war was not caused by a bunker buster. It was caused by a press release.
Hamas is Iran’s creature. The IRGC-Quds Force has provided $100 to $350 million annually since 2007 through cash smuggling via Sinai tunnels, Hezbollah intermediaries, cryptocurrency transfers, and direct Quds Force payments. The funding survived the Syria civil war split in 2012, the reconciliation that followed, and the October 7 operation that Hamas coordinated with Iranian strategic guidance. For seventeen years, the money flowed in one direction, and the loyalty flowed in the other.
The statement breaks that symmetry. Not completely. Not irreversibly. But publicly.
Hamas affirmed Iran’s right to respond to American and Israeli aggression “by all available means in accordance with international norms and laws.” That is the loyalty clause. Then it asked Iran to stop hitting the countries that Hamas needs to survive. That is the survival clause. The two clauses are incompatible, and Hamas knows it. You cannot affirm a nation’s right to fire missiles at Saudi Arabia and simultaneously ask it to stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia. The statement is not diplomacy. It is a distress signal dressed in diplomatic language.
The distress is real. Iran has struck the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and fired toward Oman and Qatar since 28 February. Every one of those countries hosts Palestinian communities. Qatar mediates Hamas’s ceasefire negotiations. The UAE processes Hamas-linked financial transfers. Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic weight shapes the Arab League position on Gaza. When Iran fires missiles at these countries, it is not attacking Israel’s allies. It is attacking Hamas’s lifelines.
Hamas depends on $100 to $350 million from Iran for weapons and military infrastructure. It depends on Qatar for diplomatic survival and political legitimacy. It depends on Gulf states for the financial channels that keep Gaza’s economy from total collapse. Iran’s war is destroying the second and third dependencies to prosecute the first. Hamas just told its patron that the price of resistance has become the destruction of the support network resistance requires.
The IRGC will not respond publicly. Axis discipline demands silence on internal disagreements. But the statement will be read in Tehran as what it is: the first public acknowledgement by an Iranian proxy that Iran’s war strategy is damaging Iran’s own alliance architecture. Hezbollah cannot issue this statement because it is fighting in Lebanon at Iran’s direction. The Houthis cannot issue it because they are firing missiles at Gulf shipping at Iran’s direction. Only Hamas, the proxy furthest from the current battlefield and most dependent on Gulf mediation, has the strategic distance to say what the others cannot.
The Axis of Resistance was built on a simple proposition: Iran funds, Iran arms, Iran directs, and the proxies fight Israel on five fronts simultaneously. The proposition assumed Iran would never attack the countries the proxies need to survive. That assumption died when Iranian missiles hit Dubai, Riyadh, and Bahrain. Hamas’s statement is the death certificate.
The organisation that started the war, Iran, has now asked Iran to stop fighting it the way Iran chose to fight it. The Axis is not broken. But for the first time in seventeen years, it is arguing in public. And the argument is about whether the war is destroying the alliance that the war was designed to defend.
BREAKING: Hamas just told Iran to stop.
The organisation that Iran armed, funded, trained, and deployed as the southern blade of the Axis of Resistance has issued a public statement calling on “our brothers in Iran not to target neighboring countries” and urging “all countries… pic.twitter.com/HdEBH65Em6
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 14, 2026