Hamas is the Palestinian movement that carried out the October 7 attack. Asked whether it is a terrorist organization, John Kiriakou answers that “an argument could be made that it’s a freedom-fighting organization… dedicated to the liberation of its people.”[1] He frames the attack as the product of decades of subjugation, pushed “over the edge” by the election of the hardest right-wing government in Israeli history under Benjamin Netanyahu.[2][3] Elsewhere, Kiriakou calls Hamas a “bloodthirsty terrorist organization,” alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad, saying it formed around 1990-91 and has ruled Gaza since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal.[4] He also notes that Hamas is officially labeled a terrorist organization by only 13 of the more than 100 member states of the United Nations.[5]
On motive, Kiriakou says Hamas itself stated in the week after October 7 that the impending Israel-Saudi diplomatic normalization deal was what finally drove the group to launch the attack.[6] Asked directly, in a separate interview, whether he considers Iran’s regional allies destabilizing, Kiriakou again resists the label: “With the exception of targeting civilians on October 7th, I think that Hamas was created to liberate the Palestinian people from Israeli oppression” — arguing that terrorism is often “in the eye of the beholder.”[7]