Years before the October 7, 2023, attack, Hamas leaders planned a more deadly wave of attacks against Israel — including a Sept. 11-style skyscraper bombing in Tel Aviv — while pressuring Iran to help realize their vision of Israel’s annihilation, according to documents captured by Israeli forces in Gaza and reviewed by the newspaper, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

“Electronic records and papers that Israeli officials say were recovered from Hamas command centers show advanced planning for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn carriages — though many of the plans were poorly conceived and highly impractical,” terrorism experts said. These bet on drawing in allied militant groups to launch a joint attack against Israel from the north, south and east.

The documents include a presentation explaining potential attack options as well as letters from Hamas to senior Iranian leaders in 2021 requesting hundreds of millions of dollars to fund and train an additional 12,000 Hamas fighters, the newspaper reported. It is not yet clear whether Iran was aware of the planning document or responded to the letters, but Israeli officials view the requests as part of a larger effort by Hamas to draw its Iranian allies into the kind of direct confrontation with Israel that Tehran has traditionally sought to avoid.

The newspaper says: "The 59 pages of letters and planning documents in Arabic obtained by The Washington Post represent a small fraction of the thousands of records that the Israeli Defense Forces say they have seized since the start of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza on October 27."

The decision to disclose these documents comes at a time when Israeli leaders are considering a possible retaliatory strike after Iran launched more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1, in response to the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27.

“Hamas is so determined to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map that it has managed to drag Iran into a direct conflict — under conditions for which Iran was not prepared,” an Israeli security official who has seen the messages and planning documents told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

The minutes reveal, according to the same source, that Hamas initially planned to carry out its attack on Israel in the fall of 2022, but postponed the plan in an attempt to convince its regional allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to participate.

The documents cited by the Washington Post claim that in July 2023, Hamas sent a senior official to Lebanon to meet with a senior Iranian commander, and asked the senior Iranian commander for help in striking sensitive sites, within the first hour of the attack.

The Iranian leader told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah support Hamas's plans in principle, but they need more time to prepare.

The movement also planned to discuss the attack in more detail with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah (who was assassinated by Israel on September 27), but the documents do not clarify whether this meeting actually took place, according to the newspaper.

The newspaper says that the movement adopted a well-thought-out strategy to deceive Israel about its intentions, as it deliberately avoided provoking any confrontations and avoided escalation for two years since 2021, with the aim of maximizing the element of surprise in the October 7 attack, as the leaders stated in their meetings that it was necessary to “keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm,” according to the documents.

Timing and other factors were crucial to Hamas's decision to carry out the attack, with documents showing that Hamas leaders discussed the possibility of launching the attack during the Jewish holidays, in September or October 2023.

Other factors influenced their decision, including a desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and concerns about Israel's development of a new advanced air defense system.

In addition, Hamas leaders noted that Israel's "internal situation" - an apparent reference to the turmoil caused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial plans to reform the judiciary - was among the reasons that "forced them to move toward a strategic battle."

The newspaper reported that the documents were found by Israeli soldiers in late January 2024, on a computer during a search of an underground Hamas command center in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza.

“These plans, in addition to the plan to bring down a skyscraper in Tel Aviv similar to the September 11 attacks, include targeting the Israeli railway network using trains loaded with explosives, in addition to converting fishing boats into fast attack boats, and using horse-drawn carriages to transport fighters and weapons,” the newspaper reported.

Israel claims that Yahya Sinwar, in his letter to senior Iranian officials in 2021, asked Tehran for $500 million over two years, in addition to training and equipping an additional 12,000 Hamas fighters, “$20 million per month (for two years),” promising in the alleged letters that with Iran’s support, Hamas could completely destroy Israel within two years, saying: “We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it brings us closer to achieving this sacred goal.”

The Washington Post reported that although the documents show Hamas's great ambitions to strike Israel, experts described some of these plans as impractical and incomplete, in their interview with the newspaper.

The documents also revealed a change in the relationship between Hamas and Iran since 2014, as Hamas sought more Iranian support, while Iran showed greater interest in directing how the money was spent.

Although American and Israeli officials believe that Iran was surprised by the October 7 attack and was not aware of its details in advance, they believe that both Tehran and Hezbollah were aware that Hamas was preparing a major strike, according to the newspaper.

In response to the report, the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied the allegations, accusing Israel of spreading misleading information.

“We consider the Israeli regime to be a criminal, lying and anti-human entity, and we do not believe their delusions. They have a long history of spreading lies, fabricating genuinely fake documents, and conducting deceptive psychological operations,” a mission spokesman said.

The Hamas offensive on October 7, planned for months in great secrecy, was a simultaneous breach of the Gaza fence by an estimated 3,000 fighters who attacked nearby Israeli military bases, towns and kibbutzim, killing more than 1,200 people, including 311 soldiers, and taking some 250 hostages. The attack, the brainchild of Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, was the most audacious and deadly attack against Israel.