Official: Iran gave Hamas its rocket know-how

Tehran - Iran provided Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas with the technology it has used to rain down rockets on Israel from Gaza, its parliament speaker said on Thursday.

Tehran frequently boasts of the financial and material support it gives to Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad but more rarely talks of its military assistance.

"Today, the fighters in Gaza have good capabilities and can meet their own needs for weapons," speaker Ali Larijani told the Arabic service of state television.

"But once upon a time, they needed the arms manufacture know-how and we gave it to them," he said.

During the last major conflict in and around Gaza in November 2012, Larijani said Iran was "proud" to have provided "both financial and military support" to Hamas.

Israel accused Iran of supplying Gaza militants with its Fajr-5 missile, which has a range of 75km, for use during that conflict.

But the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said at the time that it was not the missiles that had been supplied but their technology.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on the Palestinians on Wednesday to keep fighting Israel and to expand their resistance from Gaza to the occupied West Bank.