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Sooner or later, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, or another commentator will put the pieces of this puzzle involving Israel, Iran, Hamas, and Donald Trump together.

On July 28, 2023, CNN reported:

• A top-secret document that Trump discussed at a 2021 meeting at his New Jersey golf club was included in the 15 boxes returned to the National Archives in January of last year, according to a source familiar with the matter. But Trump denied it was real.
• Trump was charged with retaining the classified document, described as a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country,” which CNN reported is Iran, as part of the superseding indictment. The Iran war plan document, however, stands out as the only one from the 15 boxes Trump initially returned – before any subpoena was issued or search was conducted – that has led to any criminal charge.
• While a July 2021 meeting at Trump’s Bedminster golf club was described in the original indictment, prosecutors did not say at the time whether they had located the document Trump was allegedly showing. The new charge makes clear they have the document and believe the former president had it in his possession at the time of the meeting at which he discussed it with people not cleared to view classified material. An audio recording of the meeting first aired by CNN captures a moment when Trump seems to indicate that he is holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. “These are the papers,” Trump says in the recording.

The Guardian (UK) echoed CNN’s reporting:

• The recording, obtained by CNN, includes new details from a conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information. It includes a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. The episode is one of two referenced in the indictment where prosecutors allege that Trump showed classified information to others who did not have security clearances, CNN reported.

According to Factcheck:

• The indictment says that Trump met on July 21, 2021, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with “a writer and a publisher in connection with a then-forthcoming book,” referring to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ book, “The Chief’s Chief.” Six days before the meeting, Susan Glasser of the New Yorker published a story that detailed how Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was concerned Trump might attack Iran in the final days of his presidency. At the meeting in New Jersey, Trump told his guests that Milley wanted to attack Iran and, in fact, presented him with an attack plan.

Donald Trump disseminated top-secret information about his plans to attack Iran to people not authorized to see it.

As stated by the National Archives, “Top Secret” shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe,” a definition confirmed by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

This wasn’t the only time Trump disclosed top-secret or classified information.

States Wikopedia:

• President Donald Trump discussed classified information during an Oval Office meeting on May 10, 2017, with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The information was provided by a U.S. ally and concerned a planned Islamic State (ISIL) operation, providing sufficient detail that the Russians could use to deduce the identity of the ally and the manner in which it was collected, according to current and former government officials. The meeting had been closed to the U.S. press, although a photographer from the Russian press was present. The disclosure was first reported in The Washington Post on May 15, 2017. White House staff initially denied the report, but the following day, Trump defended the disclosure, stating that he has the “absolute right” to “share” intelligence with Russia.

• It was later reported that Israel was the source of the information. Israel did not confirm or deny the report but released a statement stating full confidence in the intelligence sharing relationships with the United States. Ynetnews, an Israeli news website, had previously reported on January 12 that, in a meeting held in early January (during Trump’s presidential transition), U.S. intelligence officials advised Israeli Mossad and other intelligence officials to “be careful” when transferring intelligence information to the Trump White House until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Christopher Steele‘s report (commonly referred as the Steele dossier), has been fully investigated. U.S. officials were concerned that the information, particularly about sensitive intelligence sources, could be passed to Russia and then to Iran. Two Israeli intelligence officials confirmed privately that Trump’s disclosure of the intelligence to Russia was “for us, our worst fears confirmed.” They said the disclosure jeopardizes Israel’s “arrangement with America which is unique to the world of intelligence sharing” and that Israeli officials were “boiling mad and demanding answers.”

U.S. officials were concerned that information …

could be passed to Russia and then to Iran. 

On March 31, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new Russian foreign policy concept that hailed the ongoing “formation of a more equitable multipolar world order,” War on the Rocks reported. “The concept highlighted Moscow’s intent to strengthen its ties with the non-West, in particular ‘developing full-scale and trusting cooperation’ with Iran and other states discontented with Western policies toward their countries. While the Russian-Iranian relationship has been strengthening for years, this showed that the alliance was deepening, especially as a result of the war in Ukraine. 

“This partnership is not merely a transactional alliance of convenience,” the War on the Rocks article continued. “The two countries are first tied by a shared animosity with the ‘collective West,’ whose values and strategic objectives present, according to their perspective, a hostile ideological challenge that can endanger their social cohesion and political stability. Russia and Iran also share a common concern for regime survival. They both have faced internal upheaval and international sanctions that have led them to develop mirror narratives centered around resilience, self-sufficiency, and resistance. This has drawn the two states closer.”

The relationship between Russia and Iran, Trump disclosing top-secret (Pentagon) documents about Washington’s potential war on Iran, as well as sharing classified information with Russian officials about a planned USA  Islamic State (ISIL) operation is established. What about Hamas? Where and how does it fit into all this political intrigue?

The Iranian role in the clearly well-planned and well-coordinated Hamas attack by land, air, and sea on Israel is the subject of much debate.

• “Hamas and Iran are longtime allies. Did Tehran help with its attack on Israel?” asked CNN on October 10, 2023. “The level of planning that would have been required for such an assault (on Israel) prompted questions about whether Hamas could have done it alone – and if it had help, whether that could have come from its longtime backer in the region, Iran.”
  
• Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer reiterated that the United States believes Iran is “broadly complicit” in Hamas attacks in Israel, but said the US does not have “direct information” linking these attacks to Iran at this time. “What we can be quite clear about is that Iran is broadly complicit in these attacks for having supporting Hamas going back decades,” Finer said during an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America, pointing to weapons, training, and other financial support.
  
• He continued, “What we don’t have is direct information that shows Iranian involvement in ordering or planning of the attacks that took place over the last couple of days. It’s something that we’re going to keep looking at closely.”

Yet Iran’s evolving relationship with Hamas and its Palestinian militant partners, the Islamic Jihad, is well documented, says CNN:

• “The Palestinian Islamic Jihad – a Gaza-based militant group which is smaller than Hamas but a significant fighting force in the coastal enclave – has enjoyed a long and public alliance with Tehran.”
  
• The same CNN article reports that, “Israel says Iran supports Hamas to the tune of some $100 million dollars a year. The US State Department in 2021 said that the group receives funding, weapons, and training from Iran, as well as some funds that are raised in Gulf Arab countries.”
  
• A State Department report from 2020 found that Iran provided about $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas.

Former US officials say there is little question that the massive stockpile of weapons used in Hamas’ attack was acquired and assembled with help from Iran. “Hamas didn’t build the guidance system and those missiles in Gaza,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of US Central Command. “They got them from somewhere. And the technology assistance to put it together certainly came from Iran – where else would it have come from?”

• Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), says he believes that Iran aims to create “a reality of war in order to exhaust Israeli society, in order to exhaust the Israel Defense Forces. Here is the common denominator between the Iran strategy and the Hamas strategy. Therefore, Iran is an asset for Hamas and Hamas is an asset for Iran,” says Michael.

• That Iran has supported Hamas financially by the provision of rockets and arms and by training is well known, asserts the Wilson Center. “Iran’s modus operandi in the Middle East has long been to avoid direct involvement but act through proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza, and militias in Iraq—to expand its influence and achieve its policy goals. The long-term planning that made last week’s Hamas attack possible strongly suggests an Iranian role.”

• In fact, an article in the Wall Street Journal quotes senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, saying that Iranian security agents and representatives of the Revolutionary Guards were involved in the training and planning of the attack and that, in a meeting in Beirut, gave Hamas the go-ahead.

Former US President Donald Trump’s sharing classified intelligence with Russian officials in 2017 has come back into the spotlight amid a state of war in Israel after one of the deadliest attacks on the country by Hamas militants.

“Prominent American commentators hinted at Trump’s alleged role in intelligence-sharing with Russia as a potential reason why Hamas was able to dodge the Israeli intelligence network as it went on to launch one of its deadliest attacks on Israel in decades, catching Israelis off-guard, claims WION, an Indian English language news channel headquartered in Noida owned by the Essel Group and part of the Zee Media network of channels.

WION continues: “Thom Hartmann, author and political commentator, posted on X (formerly Twitter): ‘Hamas apparently knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. They probably learned this from Iran. Iran almost certainly got the information from Russia. And who gave it to Russia? Sure looks like it was Donald Trump, at the request of Putin.”

Was Donald Trump’s dissemination of top-secret classified information the smoking gun that will tie the current GOP front-runner to Hamas’ attack on Israel, as well as add fuel to the fire in both of Jack Smith’s criminal cases against the disgraced but petulant former president?

Surely, someone at MSNBC will investigate and connect the dots.