In the knotty game of wars, peace agreements, and secret diplomacy characterizing the Middle East over the past century, the dynamic between Israel and Iran is quite complex and strange at the same time. In the wake of the past few decades of inflamed tensions between them, it may be hard to imagine that the countries ever had friendly relations. But you will be surprised to know they were once friends and even allies(to some extent)! That’s correct, the relationship between the Jewish state and the Islamic Republic of Iran wasn’t always so fraught and there was a time when the two states were engaged in multifaceted political, economic, and security cooperation, among other fields. Even after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when Iran abruptly severed diplomatic ties with Israel, military cooperation continued for several years as Iran turned to Israel to arm it during its devastating war with neighboring Iraq. Today, although the relationship between the two countries hangs by a thread and the prospect of a direct confrontation is not that far-fetched, one can reasonably say that the two countries were never predestined for everlasting hostility. After all, they have no common borders, territorial disputes, or economic competition. Each country has traditionally maintained distinct regional zones of interest, the Levant for Israel and the Persian Gulf for Iran. Whereas large Arab neighbors of Iran, like Iraq or Saudi Arabia, might be considered its natural competitors, Israel cannot.
Moreover, Jews have lived in Persia as Iran has been known throughout history for some 2,700 years, and what historical memory there is of Persian-Judaic interactions is- it’s largely positive in Jewish eyes. Biblical tales too tell us about the instrumental role Persian monarchs played in ending the Jewish people’s 70-year exile in Babylon and in the construction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. There are even streets in Israel named after Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return to Judea from their Babylonian exile in 538 BCE. Conversely, Judea never rose to compete with Persia for regional prominence, as did Greek or later Arab forces.
So, what went wrong?
How did these two countries now turn out to be archenemies?
To grasp the intricacies of this situation, let’s first delve into a brief historical overview. Following the conclusion of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations assigned the responsibility of governing Palestine to the British. During this period, Palestine was marked by a Jewish minority and an Arab majority. The British mandate for Palestine, which commenced in 1920, had the objective of facilitating the creation of a national homeland for the Jewish people in the region. This policy triggered tensions between the Jewish and Arab communities which only kept on flaring from the 1920s to the 1940s as Palestine experienced significant waves of Jewish immigration, primarily driven by persecution in Europe and the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Long story short, Arab demands for independence and opposition to Jewish immigration led to a rebellion in 1937, followed by ongoing acts of terrorism and violence from both sides. Various proposals were explored to grant independence to a region ravaged by violence, but all of them proved unsuccessful. Eventually, in 1947, the United Kingdom handed over the Palestine issue to the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. On May 15, 1947, the UN established UNSCOP, or the UN Special Committee on Palestine, comprising representatives from 11 nations. UNSCOP conducted hearings and after an assessment of the situation in Palestine, subsequently issued a report on August 31 that recommended the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem under international administration.
This is where Iran enters the picture, as it was one of the eleven nations that formed the UNSCOP. Iran, in conjunction with India and Yugoslavia, expressed opposition to the division of the region into distinct Arab and Jewish nations, proposing instead a unified federation of self-governing Arab and Jewish states under a representative central government based in Jerusalem. However, the Committee rejected this proposal with a 7–3 vote and advocated for partition. The partition plan was subsequently approved by the UN General Assembly in 1947 with a vote of 33–13, leading to the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Iran was among the 13 predominantly Arab nations that voted against this resolution, and two years later, Iran also opposed Israel’s admission to the United Nations. Nevertheless, in 1950, Iran became the second Muslim-majority country, after Turkey, to officially recognise Israel as a sovereign state.
The Pahlavi Affair (1948–78)
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has grappled with a significant security challenge, being surrounded by a vast and predominantly hostile region that shares a common religion and a strong aversion to Israel. All four of its immediate neighboring states were Arab, and the Palestinian Arabs, supported by numerous Arab and Muslim-majority nations beyond them, added to this complex geopolitical landscape. To address this situation, Israel sought to identify vulnerabilities among its potential adversaries. In the early years of the state, this strategy took the form of the “periphery doctrine,” an idea crafted by its first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. The doctrine aimed to forge alliances with non-Arab, yet mostly Muslim nations in the Middle East as a counterbalance to the Arab states. Among the key non-Arab partners were Turkey and pre-revolution Iran, both of which shared a common Western orientation and had their own reasons for feeling isolated within the Middle East during that period.
For Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Iran, Israel was seen as a natural ally for various compelling reasons. In today’s context, Iran’s rivalry with the Arab world is primarily cast in religious terms, pitting Iran, a predominantly Shia state versus Saudi Arabia, a major Sunni country. However back in the 1950s and 1960s, Iran’s main concern was the rising pan-Arabism movement, spear-headed by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the influence emanating from Moscow, which utilized substantial military and economic support to back militant Arab regimes as a means to spread Soviet power and influence throughout the Middle East. Naturally for Shah, Israel looked like a golden opportunity for gaining the sponsorship of the United States, which was seeking allies in its struggle for both regional and global dominance with the Soviet Union. Israel’s impressive progress and strength captured his interest, and its ongoing conflict with the Arab world, coupled with its opposition to Communist influence in the region, further solidified the grounds for strengthening ties. The Shah also aspired to tap into the support of American Jewry, the media, the business community, and the U.S. administration through relations with Israel. Moreover, the common adversaries shared by both countries, such as Nasserist Egypt and Ba’athist Iraq, contributed to the motivation behind this alliance.
There were other specific benefits for both sides in several other fields too. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, for example, Iran enabled the use of its territory as a safe passage to Israel for the ancient Jewish community that was expelled from Iraq at the time. Iran and Israel also viewed Iraq as a common threat, providing another rationale for cooperation. By the 1960s, Israel was supporting Iraqi Kurds fighting the central regime. Meanwhile, Iran also viewed the Iraqi Kurds as the Iraqi regime’s Achilles’ heel. Thus, Mossad and the SAVAK, Israel’s and Iran’s intelligence organizations, joined forces to aid the Kurds in their struggle against the Iraqi central government. The Mossad created a formal trilateral intelligence alliance (code-named Trident) with Iran and Turkey in 1958 with the three countries exchanging intelligence and performing joint counterintelligence operations that would continue to expand until the Islamic revolution. In addition, Tehran also allowed Israel to use its territory to extend invaluable military support to the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq, a move that served the Shah’s goal of weakening Baghdad and asserting Iranian dominance throughout the Persian Gulf.
The shah, who began his career as a mere figurehead and was harshly scrutinized by local powers and superpowers, later emerged as an absolute monarch determined to proceed with his development plans. His ideology, basing itself on Westernization, secularisation, and nationalism permitted increasingly greater Iranian-Israeli cooperation. Viewing himself as a benevolent leader following in the footsteps of Cyrus the Great probably reinforced his tolerant approach to religious minorities and his friendship with Israel. He also viewed cooperation with Israel as a springboard for the transformation of Iran into a modern, technologically advanced, and developed country. Hence he encouraged the establishment of a substantial presence in Iran of Israeli advisors, instructors, and contractors in numerous spheres. Areas include military and security affairs, agriculture support, engineering, and various other fields. The Israeli presence was in fact so large that it even necessitated the opening of a Hebrew-language school in Tehran for children of Israeli personnel stationed in Iran while regular flights connecting Tel Aviv and Tehran became a common occurrence. Iran also became a major importer of Israeli goods and services.
Another geopolitical consideration that played a key factor was Israel’s dire need for energy sources on the one hand, and Iran’s desire to expand its oil exports, on the other. Devoid of oil resources and subjected to an all-Arab economic boycott, Israel had to find alternative energy sources that would meet the demands of its rapidly growing population. Who else other than non-Arab Iran? Relations in this field were established in the 1950s, reaching their zenith in the wake of the June 1967 Six-Day War when Israel convinced Iran to jointly establish the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Israel’s promise of generous returns on Iran’s investments in the pipeline matched the latter’s desire to establish itself as a dominant player in the international oil market. The Arab oil boycott of 1973, designed to penalize the United States and Europe for their support of Israel, further bolstered the Shah’s regime. Since Iran had not joined the boycott, it became the primary beneficiary. Consequently, Iran’s oil sales to both Israel and Europe grew dramatically, and with them the countries’ revenues. Iran also leveraged its oil production to further its military interests. In 1977, a collaborative military venture between Iran and Israel, known as Project Flower, focused on the advancement of sophisticated missile systems. This initiative was part of a series of six oil-for-arms agreements signed by the two nations in the late 1970s, with an estimated total value of $1.2 billion. Iran initially paid around $300 million in cash and an additional $250 million in oil, thereby becoming the primary financier for numerous Israeli-led research and development projects. While Israel took the lead in the development phase, Iran initiated the construction of facilities for missile assembly and testing. Both countries anticipated that their respective armed forces would procure the new defense systems upon completion. Little did they realize that significant changes were on the horizon!
Growing threat
Just as the relationship flowered in response to larger political conditions, it also came to an end because of larger geopolitical changes. The death of Abdel Nasser in 1970 and the ascension of Anwar Sadat led to a warming of relations between Egypt and Iran. Unlike Nasser, the Shah trusted Sadat and supported his Middle East policy. Moreover, in March 1975, Iran and Iraq signed the Algiers Accord putting a temporary end to the Iranian-Iraqi conflict and closing a chapter in Iran-Israeli common support for Iraqi Kurds. In both cases, Israel’s strategic value to Iran suffered. Although friendship prevailed and both countries still worked together in many different areas, still Iran found itself with fewer reasons to form strong connections with Israel. Throughout this period of friendship, anti-Israeli attitudes continued to flame, particularly among the clergy and the anti-shah and anti-western elements. Most prominent among these spokesmen was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Already in the 1960s, Khomeini had used Shah’s relations with Israel and the United States as a silver bullet to discredit the monarch and undermine his legitimacy, accusing him of allowing Israel to fully penetrate Iran’s economic, military, and political affairs. According to Khomeini, the Shah’s relations with Israel and the US violated the principles of Islam and threatened Iran’s independence, values, and integrity. In his view, the US was the ‘Great Satan’ because it constituted the primary threat to Iran’s Islamic character and independence while Israel was the ‘Little Satan’ as an illegal occupier of Islamic lands and influencer of US decision-making in the Middle East.
When the Shah was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and his authoritarian secular regime was replaced by a no-less-oppressive Islamic one, the relationship with Israel was one of the first things to go. Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France on February 1, 1979, and established the Islamic Republic of Iran declaring himself as its supreme leader. Within weeks of the Islamic Revolution, Tehran severed all formal links with Israel, inaugurating a new era in Israeli-Iranian relations characterised by venomous hostility towards the Jewish State and open calls for its destruction that have persisted to this very day.
There’s a common saying that pragmatic interests and common enemies often trump ideology. If only I had a dollar for every time this statement stands true! When Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in September 1980 seemed to endanger the survival of the Islamist regime, much like the Shah, the Islamic Republic quickly realized the value of an Israeli counterweight to its Arab neighbors and was prepared to receive covert military support from Israel in what came to be known as the Iran- Contras Affair. The notorious Iran-Contra deal in the mid-1980s involved a bizarre plot in which Israel supplied US-made missiles to Iran in exchange for funds, which were then used to provide arms to the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Israel itself had a vested interest in Iraq’s defeat, as it viewed Saddam Hussein as a central threat to its security and a victorious Iraq presented a far more potent challenge to Israel than Iran did at the time. Not only were such arms transfers financially lucrative for Israeli arms traders, but Israeli officials continued to find value in supporting Iran to counter the common Iraqi threat while leaving the door open for improved relations with Iran in the future. Between 1981 and 1983, it sold an estimated $500 million worth of arms to Iran, most of them paid for in oil.
Yet this episode didn’t reduce Tehran’s enmity with Israel. Quite the contrary, it helped bring together different Shia groups in Lebanon into one organization called Hezbollah. Also during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran continued to collaborate secretly with Israel on defense issues, while ramping up its rhetoric against the Jewish state in public. The regime’s painting of Israel as a threat to the Arab world eased Iran’s sense of isolation and enhanced its image as a force of resistance. However, Israel benefited from the arms deals, both economically and geopolitically. In addition to making money off the sales, Israel hoped to win the favor of moderates in the Iranian regime who would potentially take power after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death and steer Iran toward better relations with Israel. Iran did indeed adopt more pragmatic policies after Khomeini died in 1989, but to Israel’s dismay, they were very short-lived.
Threats to rivals
By 1991, the geo-strategic map of the Middle East was significantly transformed by two critical events, namely, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demolition of the Iraqi army in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The historians also claim that the real turning point in Israeli-Iranian relations was not in 1979, but in 1991 as the end of the Cold War also ended the Iranian-Israeli cold peace. With the Soviets out of the picture and the defeat of their nemesis Saddam Hussein’s regime in the Gulf War, Iran once again turned against the United States and its regional ally Israel. Under the banner of resistance against the Zionist regime, the Iranian government began to expand its influence in the region. It did so by engaging in covert activities in Arab Sunni countries and providing support to groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Throughout the 90s, the rhetoric between Tehran and Jerusalem became increasingly hostile and threatening, as Iran took the place of Iraq as the most significant strategic threat to Israel.
But above all, decision-makers in Jerusalem were greatly alarmed by Tehran’s dogged quest for nuclear weapons in the decades attending the Iran-Iraq War, which in their view poses an existential threat to Israel. While the Islamist regime seemed initially uninterested in sustaining the nuclear program established by the Shah in the 1950s with US support through the nuclear cooperation agreement known as Atoms for Peace Program, the ongoing war with Iraq produced a sea change on the issue and by mid-1980s Tehran had resumed its nuclear efforts in considerable strength. Although it was under Netanyahu that the presumed Iranian plan to develop nuclear weapons emerged as a prime military concern, it was his predecessors Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres who began to drum into the Israeli public the danger that Iran supposedly constituted to Israel. By the following decade, the Israeli-Iranian rivalry became well-established and visible. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to the defeat of longstanding Iranian adversaries like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein which actively resulted in widespread regional perceptions of growing Iranian regional influence. The Israelis started to see Iran as the cause of many conflicts in their region because they realized Iran’s role in strengthening nonstate groups like Hamas and Hezbollah responsible for threatening stability in areas bordering Israel. The election of Iranian President Ahmadinejad in 2005 and his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric and Holocaust denials only deepened Israeli fears of Iran.
What further added fuel to the fire was the revelation of the extent of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. By the end of 2011, even US President Barack Obama, who had been trying to appease Iran, was pushed to impose strict sanctions on Tehran due to congressional pressure and the fear of a potential Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The European Union also imposed several sanctions following which on November 24, 2013, an agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action or JPOA was signed between Iran and major world powers. Under the agreement, Iran agreed to limit some of its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for $7 billion in sanctions relief. This deal marked a significant shift in the international community’s approach to Iran, moving from dismantling its nuclear weapons program to extending the time it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon while leaving its nuclear infrastructure largely intact. After nearly two more years of negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached on July 14, 2015, and despite President Obama’s optimism about the agreement, it had some significant loopholes that could allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons within ten to fifteen years. Unable to prevent the signing of the JCPOA, the Israeli government intensified its covert efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program and urged the major powers to reconsider the agreement. These efforts bore fruit on May 8, 2018, when President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and reinstated some of the sanctions lifted by the Obama administration. But the main reason for the current rivalry stems far greater than just Iran’s nuclear program and there are also other sources of conflict between Israel and Iran which I am going to cover in the next chapter.
Proxy Wars
While Iran and Israel haven’t directly fought each other, the Iran-Israel proxy wars or shadow wars have been part of the broader regional rivalry in the Middle East for many years. Both sides, through the use of proxies, allies, and other factions have worked to damage and undermine each other and have made the existing wars in the Middle East worse, especially in nearby places like Syria and Lebanon. Let’s take a quick look at them.
Lebanon- Sharing a border with Israel and deeply divided along religious lines, Lebanon has featured prominently in the Iran-Israel conflict, and has over the past four decades, seen fierce clashes between Israeli forces and Iranian-backed militants. Iran’s principal ally in Lebanon is Hezbollah, a Shia organization formed during Lebanon’s sectarian civil war in the 1980s, which remains potent both as a militant and political force in the country to this day. The group considers itself at war with Israel and labels it an eternal threat to Lebanon. Hezbollah is considered a proxy of Iran, an acknowledgment confirmed by the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Reportedly, Tehran provides the group with an estimated US$700 million a year in funding, along with armaments including rockets and short-range missiles. While Iran views Hezbollah as a key component in its axis of resistance against Israel, the latter considers it a terrorist organization involved in various attacks, including rocket strikes, suicide bombings, and kidnappings, targeting Israel and Israeli interests worldwide. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Iranian Revolutionary Guards were believed to have directly assisted Hezbollah fighters in their attacks on Israel. Multiple sources suggested that hundreds of Revolutionary Guard operatives participated in the firing of rockets into Israel during the war, and secured Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. Then in 2020, the two sides exchanged fire along the Israel-Lebanon border in what allegedly was an attempt by Hezbollah to infiltrate Israeli territory. In July 2022, Israeli aircraft intercepted three unarmed Hezbollah drones which had crossed into Israeli airspace. Tensions between Hezbollah and Israel persist to this very day, all the while enabling Iran to exert significant political influence in Lebanon, a country crucial to its strategic goals.
Syria- Beginning as a popular uprising in 2011 against the country’s corrupt dictator, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Civil War has devolved into a horrific, multi-faceted theatre of war which has caused between 470,000 to 610,000 deaths and made Syria a battleground in several proxy conflicts. Iran considers Syria a strategic ally and a member of its axis of resistance against Israel. At the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Iran provided the Assad government with financial, intelligence, and military support. In addition to deploying members of its own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Tehran also enlisted, trained, and paid men from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq to fight in Syria. As per sources, Hezbollah has also been active in the Syrian war since at least late 2012.
In 1948, Syria joined other nearby Arab countries in denouncing the State of Israel as a country and was one of the countries that invaded the Jewish state just one day after Israel declared its independence. Further in the 1967 Six-Day War fought between Israel, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, Israel annexed a great deal of surrounding territory, including the Golan Heights region in the north. Since then, Syrian and Israeli forces have clashed over control of the land and relations have kept on deteriorating. So it’s not hard to guess between Israel and Iran, where the Syrian allegiance lies. The intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria further inflamed Israeli fears that the war could result in a permanent and substantial Iranian military presence in Syria, a country that borders Israel and provides an excellent opportunity for Hezbollah to access more advanced weaponry from its Iranian, Syrian and Russian co-belligerents. Since then, Israel has conducted airstrikes on multiple occasions targeting Iranian military assets and shipments of advanced weaponry intended for groups like Hezbollah.
Gaza- As it battles Iranian allies in Lebanon and Syria, Israel also faces Iran-backed threats which is far more alarming as it is much closer to home. Yes, the current Gaza strip which I am sure you all have heard in the news recently. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories which were planned to be part of a Palestinian state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan but had been occupied respectively by Jordan and Egypt since 1948.
Israeli occupation led to the creation of Palestinian militant groups seeking to force the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza and create an independent Palestinian state. Though many such groups exist, Israeli leaders often single out Hamas as the principal Palestinian threat to Israel’s security. Founded in the 1980s as an offshoot of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas calls the establishment of Israel entirely illegal and has pledged to create a fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital through armed resistance. The group also rejects any diplomatic solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While not a proxy of Tehran like Hezbollah, Hamas has a longstanding relationship with Iran, which its leader Ismail Haniyeh has praised for backing his group financially, politically, and militarily. It is estimated that Iran has been funding Hamas since at least the 1990s and provided some US$20-US$50 million annually during that decade. By 2012, the flow of Iranian aid to Hamas is estimated to have reached about US$23 million a month. After a brief rift over the Syrian Civil War, in which Iran and Hamas backed opposite sides of the conflict, high-level talks between Hamas and Iranian officials led to a rekindling of the relationship. In 2018, Iran reportedly resumed aid to Hamas at a rate of about US$5 million a month. Iran has also confirmed sending rockets to Hamas and aiding the group in producing its own rockets domestically. Don’t you think it has some contribution to the current situation?
Today, as I write this blog, I am sure anyone reading this blog is aware of the situation that has engulfed the international news from Oct 7 when Hamas initiated the attack on Israel. Fifteen days later 1,400 people have died in Israel and at least 4,300 in Palestine and counting!
As far as which side I am leaning on-
Irrespective of the botched history between the two countries, I believe-
Hamas attacked Israelis and killed innocent civilians.
IF THIS IS EVIL
Currently, the Israeli government is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza that threatens to come with unimaginable human costs. The callousness with which they are talking about civilian deaths in Gaza is appalling. An anonymous Israeli official told an Israeli reporter that their response would turn Gaza into a “city of tents”. A parliamentarian from the ruling Likud party said on national television, that Israel should not concern itself with the safety of any Gazans who “chose” to stay in the Gaza Strip or the Israel’s air assault on a hospital in Gaza.
THIS TOO IS EVIL
I do not pretend to know exactly what the right choice is for Israel or (the people living in Gaza) going forward. But I do believe that if the Israeli Defense Forces do slaughter civilians indiscriminately, the Israeli government will be committing abuses on moral par with those of Hamas.
Anyway, coming back on the topic, shortly after Hamas’s assault on Israel, The Wall Street Journal, relying on Hamas sources, reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran had green-lit the Oct. 7 attack. The veracity of this report is still questionable as the U.S. government officials said they don’t have evidence of Iran’s involvement, and Tehran itself claims that Hamas is an independent actor. But those who understand the Islamic Republic’s regime find it hard to believe that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn’t give his consent.
The future?
With the Islamist regime’s ambitions rekindled in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, gaining a major push after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and shooting to unprecedented heights due to the Arab upheavals of the 2010s, Tehran has developed a ring of fire strategy that seeks to surround Israel with massive missile and UAV bases — not only from Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and Syria but also from faraway Iraq and Yemen. This situation has created a tense standoff where both Iran and Israel are reluctant to start a major war. Iran is cautious because Israel has a powerful air force, a strong defense system against missiles, and is believed to have nuclear-armed submarines. On the other hand, Israel is well aware of the significant threat posed by Iran’s large missile arsenal, especially the estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles held by Hezbollah.
While this tense balance has prevented a full-scale war between the two countries so far, there’s still a possibility that things could escalate if Iran gets closer to obtaining nuclear weapons. You see from Israel’s perspective, one thing is clear. The rise of a nuclear Iran is too grave a danger and Israeli leaders no longer view the peace process as a primary way in stopping Iranian influence. Given Iran’s actions and attitude, they now believe that curbing Iranian regional influence is the key to resolving Israel’s dispute with its Arab neighbors.
Iran’s view of Israel as a direct rival has also solidified in the recent light. The regime wants Iran as the Middle East’s ascendant power and increasingly views Israel as an obstacle to its ambitions. The past doesn’t always predict the future, but the good relationship Israel had with Iran when the Shah was in power shows that the current hostility isn’t set in stone. Forty-four years ago, when Iran had a revolution, it changed the Middle East. Perhaps another revolution in Iran could do it again. But then again given the precarious nature of today’s landscape, it’s wishful thinking. But why not? We should always hope for the best. The world is already in pieces with so much going around, a little wishful thinking always helps, right?
