Iran vs Israel | Chronicles of a war foretold Premium

An in-depth understanding of the escalating Iran-Israel conflict, rooted in historical tensions and fuelled by geopolitical ambitions and survival strategies.

In July 1977, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, sent Lt. Gen. Hassan Toufanian, his Deputy Minister of War and Armaments, to Israel to hold secret talks with the newly formed Likud government of Menachem Begin. Three months earlier, the Shah had signed six ‘oil for arms’ contracts with Shimon Peres, the acting Prime Minister in the previous interim government. One of the contracts, code-named ‘Flower’, sought Israel to modify its advanced surface-to-surface missiles and sell them to Iran. Gen. Toufanian’s mission was to ensure that the change of government in Israel would not affect the deal. He met Maj. Gen. Ezer Weizman, Defence Minister in the Begin government, and both of them agreed to build a military co-production line — Israel was to provide the technical know-how and Iran the finances and test sites. As part of it, Israel promised to supply Iran with ballistic surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700 km that could carry nuclear warheads, writes journalist Ronen Bergman in his book, The Secret War with Iran.

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But within two years, the relationship had turned upside down. The Shah was toppled by nationwide protests. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a leading Shia cleric, arrived in Tehran in February 1979 from exile in Paris. Shia Islamists, under Khomeini’s leadership, took over the reins of the country and turned it into an Islamic Republic — a semidemocratic, theocratic state. The new Iran declared “liberation” of Jerusalem one of its key objectives. At the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, 66 Americans, including diplomats and civilian personnel, were taken hostage by revolutionaries. For revolutionary Iran, America, which had orchestrated the 1953 coup against nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossaddegh and had been the principal backer of the Shah, was the “great Satan”, while Israel, the occupier of Palestine, was the “little Satan”.

The revolution did not just transform Iran; it was also a geopolitical earthquake. If the Shah’s Iran had been one of the pillars of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Khomeini’s Iran emerged as this alliance’s top nemesis. Forty-seven years later, that enmity has escalated into a full-blown war, with Israel and the U.S. launching air strikes in Iran and Tehran retaliating against Israel and American bases in the region.

The Islamic Republic was born in a region that was already witnessing new currents in Arab-Israeli relations. In 1978, Egypt became the first Arab country to recognise Israel, in return for the Sinai Peninsula which Israel had seized in the 1967 War. Arab countries, though still supportive of the Palestinian cause, were moving away from the phase of confrontation with Israel. For Shia revolutionary Iran, its support for Palestine was not only a religious duty but also a practical foreign policy move aimed at winning over the Muslim world, bridging the Shia-Sunni divide. Israel, which established conventional deterrence against Arab countries in the region, saw a new enemy emerging. The rivalry between Israel and Iran has shaped West Asia’s geopolitics ever since.

With support from the U.S. and other Western partners, Israel, a nuclear-armed country, has emerged as the most powerful military in the region. On the other side, Iran, which faced American sanctions immediately after the revolution, turned to building and supporting a network of militias. In the early 1980s, Iran helped create Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia movement. And in the 1990s, it doubled down on its support for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. When the Oslo process, which promised a two-state solution to the Palestine question, collapsed in the latter half of the 1990s, Hamas emerged as a major pillar of the Palestinian resistance. This, in turn, turned Iran into a key player in the Israel-Palestine crisis.