For the past few years in particular, Israel and Iran have been on a dangerous collision course, in an ominous replay of Israel’s bitter battles with the Arab world from 1948 onward.
Yet until the Islamic revolution of Feb. 11, 1979, Israel had reasonably cordial, even close relations with Iran, a country whose rivalry with its Arab neighbours is rooted in a historic scramble for regional dominance.
Even at the height of Israel’s honeymoon with Iran, however, Iran treaded carefully, preferring to keep its ties with Israel out of public view, in a calculated policy that gave new meaning to the word realpolitik. Israel’s relationship with Iran was sensitive and complicated, a fact that shines through Trita Parsi’s finely nuanced Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (Yale University Press). In this fascinating but heavy-going book, Parsi – the president of the National Iranian American Council and an adjunct professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University – focuses largely on Israel and Iran, placing their marriage of convenience within the wider context of American interests in the Middle East.
What quickly becomes apparent is that all three countries used each other to attain strategic advantage. Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab states, needed to build alliances with non-Arab nations, primarily Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia, on the periphery of the Mideast. As well, Israel sought to encourage aliyah from Iran’s sizable Jewish community. Iran, ruled imperiously by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi until his ouster in 1979, regarded Israel as a balancing force against the Soviet Union and radical Arab states. The United States viewed Iran and Israel as bulwarks blocking Soviet expansionism and Arab extremism.
Being a Muslim state, Iran was one of 13 states that cast a dissenting vote on partitioning Palestine under the 1947 United Nations plan. For the first two years of Israel’s existence, Iran declined to recognize Israel either on a de facto or de jure basis. But once Iran was convinced that Israel was in the western camp, it extended de facto recognition.
In the wake of the 1956 Suez war, Iran co-operated with Israel in the building of an oil pipeline from Eilat to Ashkelon so that Iranian oil exports would bypass Egypt’s Suez Canal. By the same token, Tehran shied away from overt relations with Israel, realizing that it would fuel Arab opposition to Iran’s policies in the Persian Gulf.
Given these calculations, Parsi observes, the Shah delegated Iran’s secret police to handle relations with Israel through the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service. Usually, the ministry of foreign affairs – which was critical of Iran’s ties with Israel – was kept out of the loop. Iranian police, army and air force personnel were secretly trained in Israel, and Israel sold high-tech military equipment to Iran. In this clandestine spirit, he adds, Iranian diplomats who manned Iran’s unobtrusive mission in Tel Aviv in the 1970s were, for the official record, posted to Switzerland. Iranian officials who visited Israel travelled through Turkey and never had their passports stamped. Israeli visits to Iran, including then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s first trip in 1961, were not publicized.
The Six Day War marked a major shift in the Shah’s attitude toward Israel. He now considered Israel as an aggressive rather than as an embattled state, fearing that it might challenge Iran’s quest for regional preeminence and its strategic significance in Washington. He also feared that a resurgent Israel would compromise his high wire act of maintaining strong relations with the Jewish state without angering his Arab neighbours.
The Shah, therefore, froze all joint projects with Israel, stepped up criticism of Israel’s occupation of the territories and asked the United States to apply pressure on Israel to adopt a more flexible position toward the Arabs. In 1971, in accordance with this tough approach, Iran refused to invite Israel’s president to attend celebrations marking 2,500 years of the Persian empire.
During the Yom Kippur War, Iran lent Arab armies medical and logistical assistance, but sold Israel heavy mortars and refrained from joining the Arab oil embargo.
Viewing Iraq as a common enemy and hoping to weaken it, Israel and Iran jointly supported Iraqi Kurds from the mid-1960s onward. In 1975, the Shah betrayed the Kurds and pulled the rug from under Israel by signing an agreement with Iraq. Iran doubly incensed Israel by voting for a United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism.
After Menachem Begin became Israeli prime minister, Iran threatened to curtail military co-operation with Israel. Despite Iran’s bluster, the Shah signed a $1 billion oil-for-arms contract, and agreed to develop a long-range missile, with Israel.
In the wake of the Islamic revolution, Iran severed diplomatic relations with, and ended all oil exports to, Israel. In a humiliating insult, Israel’s mission in Tehran was handed to the PLO. Islamists considered Israel an illegitimate state and an enemy of Islam, while leftists perceived Israel as an outpost of U.S. imperialism.
Nevertheless, Israel continued to regard Iraq as the greatest threat to its security and tried to woo the new Khomeini regime.
In 1979, Israel returned to Iran tanks that it had upgraded during the Shah’s regime. Then, in 1980, much to Washington’s annoyance, an Iranian official arrived in Israel to discuss arms sales. Iran reciprocated by permitting large number of Iranian Jews to leave. Iran’s duplicity was dizzying. As Parsi puts it, “On the one hand, Iran collaborated secretly with Israel on security matters, and, on the other, [Iran] took its rhetorical excesses against Israel to even higher levels to cover up its Israeli dealings.”
Israel’s fears of an Iraqi victory paved the way for Israeli arms sales to Iran during the initial phases of the Iran-Iraq War. From 1980 to 1983, Iran purchased more than $500-million worth of Israeli weaponry and spare parts. In a reflection of Israeli attitudes, no less a person than former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin declared that Iran was Israel’s “natural ally.” Under American pressure, Israel grudgingly cut off the flow of weapons in 1984, but contacts between Israel and Iran continued throughout the 1980s.
According to Parsi, Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon enabled Iran to export its theocratic revolution to that nation. Iranian Revolutionary Guards, having established a beachhead in the Bekaa Valley, forged a mutually beneficial relationship with Hezbollah, one of Israel’s deadliest foes, then and now.
Parsi writes that Iraq’s defeat in the first Gulf War, combined with the dissolution of the Soviet Union only months later, significantly changed the way Israel and Iran perceived each other: “The common threats that for decades had prompted the two states to co-operate and find common geostrategic interests – in spite of Iran’s transformation into an Islamic anti-Zionist state – would no longer exist.”
Shifting course, Israel adopted an anti-Iran policy after the mullahs restarted the Shah’s nuclear program. Iran reached out, for the first time, to rejectionist Palestinian groups and took the lead in attacking the Madrid peace process.
By the early 1990s, Iran was Israel’s chief adversary, With the Karine-A arms shipment incident in 2002, the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president in 2005, Iran’s status as Israel’s most intractable enemy was reinforced.
Parsi, who describes the Iranian regime as radical but rational, believes that the United States can contain Iran through dialogue and engagement. In exchange, Iran would accept a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and reduce its regional ambitions.
This, clearly, is easier said than done.