TEL AVIV – Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri said in Tehran on Sunday that Hamas and Iran are on “the same path” in fighting Israel, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported.

“We are on the same path as the Islamic Republic — the path of battling the Zionist entity and the arrogant ones,” Arouri said during a meeting with Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, Kamal Kharazi.

Arouri was joined in Tehran by other senior Hamas officials, including Moussa Abu Marzouk, Maher Salah, Husam Badran, Osama Hamdan, Ezzat al-Rishq and Ismail Radwan.

Iran funds Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the military arm of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades.

On Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that the terror group was “expecting important results” from the meetings in Tehran.

He did not elaborate further.

Haniyeh addressed Hamas’ withdrawal from Syria, saying the move was “procedural and fully investigated.”

He stressed that Hamas had no interest in interfering in Syria’s internal affairs and wished the war-torn country a speedy rehabilitation process, according to the Hebrew-language Maariv newspaper.

Arouri, who in October 2017 was elected as deputy chairman of Hamas’ politburo, is also one of the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the mastermind behind several terrorist attacks against Israelis, including the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

The U.S. State Department last year issued a $5 million reward for any information leading to Arouri’s arrest.

He has made several trips to Iran since his election and praised the Islamic Republic for being the “only country” supporting Hamas’ efforts to destroy Israel.

“Iran is the only country that says that entity is carcinogenic and should be uprooted from the region,” he told the pro-Hamas Al-Quds TV in February 2018. “It is the only country that is prepared to provide real and public support to the Palestinian resistance and others to confront the entity.”