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As I sit here, writing this short piece, Israeli-Iranian relations are set to experience yet another radical twist. Early on the morning of 31 July, Israel assassinated the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Peseschkian, only a few hours earlier. He was apparently killed by an explosive charge that had been smuggled into his room, although initially new stories claimed he had been the victim of a missile launched from an Israeli drone or bomber, inside or outside Iranian air space.
Dr. Ori Goldberg is a lecturer at Reichman University, specializing in the study of modern Iran and Shia revolutionary movements.
Iran has already promised harsh retaliation and Israelis are bracing for one. The situation is compounded by the fact that Israel bombed and killed in both Lebanon and Yemen during the last week of July, in both cases causing severe damage to Hezbollah and Houthi targets. Both organizations are Iranian allies, sometimes described as “proxies”. During its never-ending genocidal campaign in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly claimed that the 7 October massacre carried out by Hamas was planned and orchestrated by Iran, and that Iran stands behind the constant escalation of hostilities in the Middle East because of its unilateral desire to destroy Israel.
This is as good a place as any to begin an analysis of the relationship between Iran and Israel. The pattern of prolonged covert hostilities marked by overt peaks of escalation seems habitual, almost pathological. Iran and Israel used to be best friends, especially under the rule of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1951–1979). Both countries enjoyed a special relationship with the United States. Tens of thousands of Israelis lived and worked in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s. Both countries saw themselves as natural allies, regional powers in the making and the carriers of ancient identities in a hostile, Arab Middle East.
Yet for decades, and especially for the past 15 years, both countries have been each other’s arch-nemesis. How did this transformation occur?
From Natural Allies to Regional Rivals
The answer is, as it always is, a combination of historical events, political context, and interpretation. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran following the revolution of 1979 played a significant part in this process. The Islamic Republic rose in stark, direct opposition to the pro-Western monarchy of the Shah. It was not Islamic at the outset of revolution. In fact, the leaders of the revolutionary coalition in 1979 assumed the clerics would provide a unifying factor and would gracefully retire to their seminaries once the Shah had been deposed. They were quite surprised when, after months of political vacuum, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini claimed executive power and managed to win a plebiscite approving the establishment of an Islamic Republic.
The new republic was quite vehement in its opposition to “Western imperialism” and saw Israel as the epitome of this form of oppression. Yet while antisemitism certainly exists in the higher echelons of the Islamic Republic, it was never the norm nor was it official (or unofficial) policy. The West, in turn, saw Iran as the sum of all its fears. The combination of religion and revolution did not sit well with anyone, including Americans and Soviets. When the new Islamic Republic began a war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980, most of the countries in the world supported Iraq in a rare show of unity.
Why did Netanyahu need an existential threat from Iran? To present Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as necessary and inevitable.
On 4 November 1979, a group of Iranian university students occupied the US Embassy in Teheran. Fifty-three diplomats and civilians were held hostage for 444 days, until their release on 20 January 1981. The Americans felt humiliated by the Islamic Republic when the US Embassy was occupied by a group of Iranian university students on 4 November. A failed rescue operation, “Eagle Claw”, which was mounted by the Carter administration, only increased the humiliation.
The enmity between the Islamic Republic and the US had been cast in stone and Israel immediately became part of the “package deal”. The US was the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Small Satan”, doing America’s bidding in the heart of the Muslim Middle East. Israel has thus become a favourite rhetorical trope for the leadership of the Islamic Republic.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 also played a major part in the transformation of the relationship between Iran and Israel. The Islamic Republic became the main patron of Hezbollah, an armed, religious Shia group that emerged as alternative to the Amal Movement, the longstanding Shia militia that had fought against Sunnis and Christians in the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990). Hezbollah carried out one of the largest terror attacks the world had seen against the US Embassy in Beirut on 18 April 1983. Iran’s support for the organization, who professed loyalty to Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, brought the rivalry between Iran and Israel much closer to home in Israeli terms.
A Foil for Occupation
But perhaps the most major shift has taken place over the past 15 years. During this time, Israel has been governed almost exclusively by various right-wing coalitions and led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s main project, his greatest act of state, was to set back and ultimately undo the political process between Israelis and Palestinians that began with the Oslo Accords, in 1993. Under Yitzhak Rabin (1992–1995), Israel had turned to an attempt at peaceful resolution after effectively ensuring its military superiority over its Arab neighbours and surviving a long-distance threat, the first Gulf War.
Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, based his political survival on the frustration of this new direction. The paramount challenge was identifying and fostering a new “existential threat”. Iran was the perfect candidate. Since both countries are considered outsiders in a predominantly Arab region and both flourished in comparison to most Arab countries (with the exceptions of the oil nations of the Persian Gulf), they compete for status and influence in the Middle East. Indeed, the creation of the Islamic Republic turned the partnership into bitter competition accompanied by intense, hostile rivalry. Still, and despite Israeli insistence, the Islamic Republic did not frame its rivalry with Israel in terms of an active commitment to Israel’s destruction. The notion that Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel is the creation of the Netanyahu era.
Why did Netanyahu need an existential threat from Iran? To present Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as necessary and inevitable, and to discard any plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state. An existential threat, grounded in the interpretation of Iran as fanatic/irrational/messianic (or all of the above), allows Israel to disavow decades of totalitarian military rule.
We are taught to see the world in dichotomous terms: for us and against us.
If the threat to Israel’s security is being orchestrated from Tehran, if this threat originates in unrelenting, uncompromising antisemitism, then Israel’s actions and policy are all the results of unavoidable necessity. The Palestinians, certainly the “extremists”, are manipulated by Iran with a radical commitment to the destruction of Israel. Israel can only respond with as much force as possible in order to foil Iran’s attempts to destroy it. Those Palestinians who are not extremists should just accept their fate as Israel battles with its existential threats.
This became the dynamic of the relationship between Israel and Iran. Israel developed a national security doctrine that saw Iran as its main enemy. Iran’s patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon was interpreted to demonstrate Iran’s attempts to prepare a force that would invade and occupy Israel in due time. Iran’s patronage and connections with various Shia communities and militias throughout the Middle East were perceived by Iran as a proactive defence against Arab hostility. Israel saw them as a “ring of fire” directed exclusively at Israel from countries like Iraq, and Yemen. Israel strengthened its capability to operate far from its own borders. Iran, in turn, strengthened its own capabilities to do the same and intensified relations with its allies across the region.
Locked in a vicious circle of hostilities and self-fulfilling prophecies, both countries now stand on the edge of a precipice. One significant difference remains, despite the vehement rhetoric on both sides. Iran treats its rivalry with Israel as a strategic challenge, a competition for regional influence and power. Israel treats its rivalry with Iran as a struggle between a perennial victim (Israel) and an unrelenting, fanatic aggressor motivated by a messianic mandate (Iran).
As I suggest above, this is the result of the need to whitewash Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is also a substantial constant of Israeli politics, the need to define an existential enemy committed to the destruction of Israel. Iran policy represents what is perhaps the broadest consensus in Israel. It brings together the Left, the Right and the centre. We are taught to see the world in dichotomous terms: for us and against us. We are also born knowing that we are, by definition, “right”. If that is the case we must have a foil — someone who is always “wrong”.