After Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination, the question was who would lead Hamas. On Tuesday, Hamas’s shadowy Shura Council gave the answer. They chose Yahya Sinwar to succeed Haniyeh as chairman of the Political Bureau and Hamas’s overall leader.

Sinwar’s selection was a bit of a surprise. Many analysts expected Khaled Mashal, Haniyeh’s predecessor, to become chairman. Despite not leading Hamas since 2017, Mashal has cast a long shadow over its activities. He often appeared with Haniyeh in diplomatic visits. His estimated net worth is $4 billion. Mashal, safe in Qatar and with years of experience on the job, seemed like a natural replacement. Hamas officials told Reuters such immediately after Haniyeh’s assassination.

Mashal, however, had two important strikes against him.

The first was that Sinwar himself did not support his candidacy. On August 3, Hamas leaders held a meeting in Qatar. Sinwar, according to the Times of Israel, messaged the leadership that he did not support Mashal. “He would prefer someone with a stronger relation with the Iranian leadership,” the Times claimed, citing Saudi media.

The leadership in Qatar is the official face of Hamas, but Sinwar is Hamas’s leader in Gaza. How much sway Qatar has over Sinwar’s decisions is questionable. Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre, even kept Haniyeh’s people in the dark about the timing and size of the operation. Since the war started, Sinwar has resisted pressure from Haniyeh to accept Israeli demands for a ceasefire.

Sinwar’s promotion then could be little more than a formality. If he is already calling most of the shots with or without the Hamas leadership’s consent, becoming chairman may be little more than confirming the reality on the ground.

Sinwar was a curious choice for another reason. Because of the current state of war, he often disappears without a trace in Gaza’s intricate tunnel network. “No one knows where he is, even Hamas,” Palestinian political analyst Fouad Khuffash stated, according to the New York Times.

Sinwar has been at the top of Israel’s hit list since the war began. Israel has mostly defeated Hamas in Gaza and is preparing to reconstruct the territory after hostilities end. It’s unlikely Sinwar will be able to reclaim control over even part of Gaza anytime soon. Yet the Shura Council reportedly selected him unanimously. Their confidence may suggest Hamas plans to smuggle Sinwar out of Gaza to continue the fight from abroad.

The second strike against Mashal is Iran.

Mashal is one of the Hamas figures least under Iran’s thumb. When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, he sided with Syria’s rebels against President Bashar Assad. Syria is an Iranian proxy, and Assad didn’t take Mashal’s stance lightly. Mashal was living in Damascus, Syria, at the time. Because of Assad’s crackdown on rebels, Mashal left Syria in 2012 with his ties to Iran and its proxies strained.

These ties haven’t improved. As recently as 2021, when Mashal visited Lebanon, Iran’s Hezbollah proxy reportedly refused to meet with him. Sinwar’s focus on Mashal’s Iran ties suggests the relationship is still frosty. In contrast, Sinwar has close relations with the leadership in Tehran.

The Shura Council’s unanimous vote for Sinwar suggests most of Hamas sees these relations with Iran as a top priority. Sinwar’s uncompromising jihad against Israel, compared to the more “moderate” figures in Qatar hoping for a ceasefire, matches Iran’s goal of utter annihilation of the Jewish state.

Sinwar also may hold more radical religious views than other potential leaders. He “reportedly sports messianic views, viewing himself and Hamas as messengers who would bring upon Allah’s promise for the end of days, in which the entire world would become Muslim, and all heretics would be killed—starting with the alleged ‘liberation of Palestine,’” wrote the Jerusalem Post. Such a worldview is similar to what many in Iran hold, most notably former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Sinwar’s selection demonstrates that the real power behind Hamas is Iran. Now its leadership appears more under Iran’s thumb than ever. Hamas is on the verge of defeat on the Gaza battlefield. But with a hard-liner like Sinwar consolidating his power instead of dissolving it, we may see a Hamas more aggressive and assertive than ever emerge from the ashes.

The Trumpet expects a more aggressive turn in Palestinian politics because of a prophecy in Zechariah 14: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city” (verses 1-2).

“The subject is the Day of the Lord—the end time,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in Jerusalem in Prophecy. “Christ prophesied that He would ‘gather all nations’ to battle Him in Jerusalem. Then He makes what might appear to be a strange statement. One half of Jerusalem is to be taken captive. Notice how specific this prophecy is. East Jerusalem—one half of the city—will be conquered by the Palestinians!”

“Jerusalem is going to be totally captured in the Tribulation,” he continues. “Many prophecies tell us that.” Because of this, Mr. Flurry predicted that “the prophecy in Zechariah 14:1-2, which has not yet been fulfilled, has to happen between 1967 and the Great Tribulation.”

The Palestinians would have to attempt such a siege from the West Bank. But the factions in the West Bank right now are weak and divided. They are in no state to attempt such an annexation as Zechariah 14 suggests. This implies a more radical takeover and organization of the West Bank. A hard-liner like Sinwar commanding all of Hamas may be the man to launch such a takeover.

To learn more, request a free copy of Jerusalem in Prophecy.