Exclusive: Found document suggests Iran sought to help Hamas make its own weapons ahead of attack, sources say

A document recovered from a computer found inside a Hamas pickup truck outside Gaza, obtained by CNN from Israeli officials, shows a Hamas military commander requesting a scholarship for Hamas operatives to study engineering, physics and technology at universities in Iran.

While it is widely known that Iran provides financial and military support to Hamas, Israeli officials and some former US intelligence officials say the document is evidence that in the run up to the October 7 attack on southern Israel, Iran was seeking to provide technical training that would help Hamas produce its own weaponry.

The Israeli government declined to comment on the document, though sources in the government confirmed its authenticity on background.

“This example is another piece in an elaborate puzzle of a deep infrastructure of building, supporting, financing and training terror proxies by the Iranian regime around the globe and specifically in the Gaza strip,” one Israeli official said.

Israeli officials say this is the first known instance of Iran attempting to fund this kind of university-hosted training for Hamas operatives, a claim US officials said they could not confirm.

CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the letter, but current and former US officials said that it was consistent with how Iran projects power throughout the Middle East. Iran has used scholarships to build its influence, develop potential intelligence assets and promote its ideology since the founding of Lebanese Hezbollah in the 1980s.

A spokesperson for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Since October 7, Israeli government officials have sought to emphasize Hamas’s ties to Iran. Tehran did not appear to have any direct involvement in the planning or execution of the attack, but both Israel…