For decades files regarding Israel-Iran ties were censored. Now, 10,000 confidential pages have been declassified and are available in Israeli State Archives. The documents tell the story of a large-scale partnership and exceptional relations between the two countries. Comparing how things were and how they have been in the past 40 years, this raises a feeling of curiosity and an urge to examine how this is possible.
In June 2005, the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was to become the sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A few months after taking office, he gave a speech at a conference held in Tehran’s Interior Ministry which was entitled “The World without Zionism.” In his hate-ridden speech, he described Israel as a “disgraceful blot” saying “as Imam Khomeini said, Israel must be wiped off the map (…) The Islamic umma will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland. Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he signed the surrender of the Muslim world.” Five years earlier then Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani called to “annihilate Israel with a nuclear strike.”
Nonetheless, in March 1950, Iran become the second Muslim-majority country after Turkey to give Israel de facto recognition, which became open and official a decade later. For a good 30 years, the two countries enjoyed very good relations and cooperated on many levels.
“Our relations with Iran are very complicated and they confirm the Arab saying ‘necessity should not be condemned’” said Moshe Sharett, Israel’s Foreign Minister on July 11, 1951.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, saw a strategic opportunity in having close ties with the newly-established state. Israel’s continued military victories in 1948 and 1967 were game changers in military terms. Israel was to be seen as a prominent regional power. The Shah was full of admiration for Israeli military capabilities and this coincided with his ambitions of making Iran into a regional power. He also felt threatened by the spread of Soviet-sponsored Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arab Nationalism. The Shah needed a strong ally who happened to be the new enemy of his enemies - Israel.
From Israel’s point view, Iran fit into Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion’s “Periphery Doctrine” of forming alliances and friendly ties with non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia, but as well as with ethnic and religious minorities, like the Maronite in Lebanon and the Kurds in Iraq, with whom Israel has maintained a discreet relationship with since 1960s.
Recently, Israel’s Foreign Ministry has lifted the lock on the more than 10,000 pages of documents regarding the relations between Israel and Iran from 1953 until 1979. The declassified files tell a history of a deep and exceptional ties. At that time Israel was newly established and faced many challenges, one of which was the threat of its hostile Arab neighbours, who were vocally opposed to its very existence. Iran’s partnership was strategic and central to Israel from a security and economic point of view. Iranian oil exports accounted to more than 60% of Israel’s needs. The alliance over oil required the two countries to work together to secure the safety of shipping routes and to counter Nasser of Egypt’s attempts to export his Arab Nationalist ideology and promote military alliances throughout the Arab world, which was at the time very hostile towards Iran and Israel.
Israeli companies, ranging from textiles, medical appliances, water, fertilizers, construction, aviation, shipping, gas, agricultural and infrastructure projects were operating extensively in Iran. In some years, Iran was one of the main destinations for Israeli exports. One of those companies was Vered, a planning and construction company that won a contract to build a 160-foot-high dam in Shiraz, Iran.
Israel was also to become one of Iran’s biggest weaponry suppliers. The spectrum of activity was wide, ranging from selling weapons and military products to training the Iranian army and security apparatus. During the 1960s, EL AL operated regular flights between Tel Aviv and Tehran insofar as Israel had so many contractors and military advisers living in Tehran that the government of Israel opened a Hebrew-language school for Israeli children. Relations existed at the highest level with Prime Minister Golda Meir meeting with the Shah in 1972. Two years later, when Meir resigned and Yitzhak Rabin took over, he also visited Iran.
The Fall of the Shah
But outside Tehran and the big cities the story was different. Iran was suffering from a sharp cultural and socioeconomic divide. Tehran and cities like Tabriz were rich, modern and had an educated class. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, people were living in poverty and there was a wide opposition to the corrupt and oppressive regime of Shah. The gap between the haves and have-nots was to widen, and with it rose louder voices demanding social justice and quality. The streets in Iran were boiling and finally exploded with mass protests uniting people from across the political spectrum.
The Shah dealt badly with these protests, excessive force was used and he ordered the army and police to open fire on unarmed demonstrators. The Shah’s brutality only galvanized the revolt and helping lead the revolution from afar was the exiled religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
The Shah fled Iran and immediately thereafter, on the 1st of February 1979, Khomeini arrived in Iran. A week after Khomeini’s return, the Israeli government decided to evacuate its remaining representatives in Tehran, especially Ambassador Yossef Harmelin.
The Shah’s authoritarian secular regime was overthrown in a popular uprising only to be replaced with authoritarian theocratic regime. The revolution was hijacked by the radical Islamists, Khomeini was to become the Supreme Leader and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new government started a campaign of terror and a crackdown on dissidents causing many Iranians to flee and seek asylum in Europe and US.
At the time of the revolution more than 100,000 Iranian Jews lived in Iran. They enjoyed a relatively good and safe life. However, this was to change as Khomeini’s rhetoric was becoming more and more anti-Israel. Jewish life was under threat and those who managed to flee did so with barely their lives.
Khomeini declared Israel as an “enemy of Islam” and called Israel “the Little Satan” and the United States was to be called ‘the Great Satan.” On February 18, 1979, he severed ties with Israel, evacuated the Israeli Embassy in Tehran and handed over the keys to Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. The new regime also introduced a ban on Jewish emigration and instituted policies aimed at Israel’s destruction.
In 1980, with arrival of Iran-Iraq war, pragmatic strategy superseded Khomeini’s ideals. Here, Israel and Iran had a common enemy, Saddam Hussein. Iran was to be embroiled in an enduring war with Iraq from 1980 until 1988. Hussein was to be supported by rich Gulf monarchies and managed to get the US and much of the western world behind him.
Iran was desperate for weapons and Israel could not resist the opportunity of arming Iran. Soon after Reagan took office, his administration secretly and abruptly changed US policy and allowed Israel to sell several billions of dollars’ worth of American-made arms, spare parts and ammunition to Iran.
Iran and Creation of Regional Proxies
With the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the second Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi threat against Iran was extinguished. Iran’s new focus was to revive the old focus - Israel. Khomeini was happy to resume the call of resisting the “Zionist Little Satan regime.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRG) and the elite Quds Force provided arms, training and financial support to militias and political movements in at least six Arab countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Yemen. Since 2012 Iran has spent at least 16 billion dollars supporting its regional proxies. In 2020, the US State Department estimated that Iran gave Hezbollah $700 million annually.
“Hezbollah’s budget, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, comes from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said in 2016
Regional enforcers like Hezbollah would carry out Iranian missions against Israeli targets, for example, the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires Jewish Centre.
Tehran’s spectrum of aid packages to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, ranged from giving them $100 million annually to having their fighters trained by IRG and the elite well-trained Quds Force. From 2012 until 2017 Iran cut the funding to Hamas after its refusal to support Assad in the Syrian civil war.
In 2017, Yahya Sinwar a Senior Hamas military leader announced:
After the fall of Hussein’s regime in 2003, Iran has created layers of local proxies in Iraq such as Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl Al Haq, and many more. These cells often would carry out missions targeting U.S.-led coalition forces and American soft targets in Iraq.
With the arrival of the Arab Spring and Syria descending into a bloody civil war, IRG established and trained the Zaynabiyoun Bridgade and reactivated the Fatemiyoun Division, which is an Afghan militia established in the 1980s. It had almost died out but was to be revived by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 2012.
In Yemen since 2012, Iran has spent hundreds of millions of dollars aiding Ansar Allah, aka Houthis. Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah expanded training and increased arms shipments and arms after a Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemen war in 2015.
Will Israel-Iran Shadow War Slip into the Open?
The probability of this shadow war turning to an open war is unlikely as both countries have determined that a direct war is not in their national interests. For years the two foes have regularly attacked each other in different places in tit for tat attacks. Between 2008 and 2010, the Israelis managed to infiltrate Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility and destroy its centrifuges using Stuxnet. Over the years a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists has taken place. Israeli officials refused to comment but all the fingerprints pointed to Israel.
Recently, Iran took the drastic step of launching missiles from Iranian territory into the Kurdish region in Iraq, striking targets in Erbil. Iran claimed the target was linked to the Israeli government, an allegation the governor of Erbil totally denied. The Erbil strike came days after Iran said that Israel had killed two Revolutionary Guard members in an attack in Syria. Around the same time Israeli government websites came under a widespread cyberattack. No one claimed responsibility, but the fingers are pointed to Iran.
The cold war or the shadow war between Israel and Iran will continue with its sporadic missile attacks, alleged espionage, cyberattacks and use of proxies to do their bidding. For an open war to happen, the determination of going to war has to change for one of them. Israel strongly opposes the Iran nuclear deal. Back in February, Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel was “organising and preparing for the day after (the signing of the deal), in all dimensions, so that we can maintain the security of the citizens of Israel on our own.”
Should the nuclear deal be signed, Israeli operational attacks against Iran are to be expected but one should rule out a full-blown war. Israel might target Iran’s nuclear facilities as well as its ballistic missile design and production facilities or it may also attack Iran’s proxies.
Some media outlets reported last month that the IDF located and attacked a hidden Iranian drone storage facility, destroying hundreds of drones. Hezbollah categorically denied this and said it is “totally and completely untrue.”
It’s hard to predict how Iran would retaliate if Israel launched a direct attack on its soil. There is no doubt that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has the military capability of defending Israel and certainly has substantial advantages over Iran with every type of conventional weaponry.
However, one should not underestimate Iran. Iran might choose to not respond directly and let its army of proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq do its bidding. Iran has already deployed substantial military assets to Syria and Iraq. Hezbollah fighters’ skills have been further sharpened due to their engagement in Syria and they have increased the size of their rocket and missile stocks. Hamas in Gaza has also a large cache of rockets. These proxies can strike targets across Israel, and perhaps hope to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome Defense systems.
Israel is aware there is little it can do to influence the outcome of the Iran nuclear negotiations. The Israeli government instead has taken other measures of counter-balance if the deal goes ahead. It appears to pressurize its US ally for a bilateral agreement to address Israeli concerns. The Knesset also passed a budget featuring a £1.6 billion increase in spending for the defense establishment to prepare for the threat posed by Iran. During the Negav Summit in March, Israel worked towards deepened security ties with its new Abraham Accords partners in the Gulf and recently signed a security pact with Bahrain.
Israel can still inflict devastating losses on Iran and its proxies even if the nuclear deal is signed. What Israel should not do is abandon the shadow war, “we must preserve the rules of the game. If we do something dramatic in Iran, like striking nuclear facilities, it will trigger a severe escalation on many fronts” says Danny Citrinowics, who used to lead IDF intel gathering on Iran.
