Author's Note: Due to the amount of information concerning the relationship between Israel and
Iran, I have decided to turn what was going to be one article into a three-part series examining
the past friendship between Iran and Israel and to give a better view of how modern-day
relations between the two countries have been affected.
In the past several years Israel and Iran have been portrayed as bitter enemies who are at each
other’s throats. One may be led to believe that the two countries have always been enemies;
however, there is a history of friendship between them. During Iran’s rule under the Shah, both
countries had extensive economic, political, and military ties that were used to ensure US and
Israeli interests in the region, yet the Iranian Revolution changed Iran’s relationship with Israel.
Due to the current confrontation between the two nations, an examination needs to take place of
how the Iranian-Israeli alliance was formed and fell apart to better show how currently relations
have been affected.
After the creation of the state of Israel, Iran was forced to play a balancing act between
supporting Israel on one hand and making sure not to upset the Arab states on the other. The
Jewish state was of great strategic interest to Iran as the Shah knew that Israel could “improve
Iran’s security by absorbing the attention and resources of the Arab states.” However, if Iran was
to formally recognize Israel, Arab would also fall on Iran thus the Shah treaded “a path between
overt hostility and overt alliance.” [1] In addition to this, the Shah wanted to back Israel and with
it the West, due to the fact that Communist ideology threatened the Shah’s rule as the levels of
wealth inequality in Iran gave rise to pro-Soviet groups such as the Tudeh (“People’s”) Party.
However, the shah was quite suspect of Israel’s loyalties due to the fact that during the outset of
Israel’s inception many Israelis “felt an emotional and ideological affinity for the Soviet Union”
due to the fact that “not only did strong socialist sentiment exist in Israel, but many Israelis
identified the Soviet Union as the country primarily responsible for defeating Nazism.” [2] This,
coupled with Israel’s efforts to befriend both the US and the Soviet Union, made the Shah
somewhat suspicious that the Jewish state may have been trying to play both sides. Thus, the
Shah adopted a wait-and-see policy where they would maintain a distance from Israel, waiting
for her to fully clarify her allegiances.
Israel’s dilemma was quite complex as they had to depend on the West for capital investment,
but needed Jews from both the East and the West to immigrate to Israel in order to grow its
population and survive. The ethnic makeup of Palestine was against Israelis as by 1948
Palestinians outnumbered Israelis two to one (1.35 million compared to 650,000). While Israel
did end up siding with the West, it did not change the fact that they were surrounded by hostile
Arab nations. Thus, then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion came up with the doctrine of
the periphery which held that due to the improbability of making allies out of the Arab states,
Israel should focus cultivating alliances and friendships with non-Arab states such as Turkey,
Iran, and Ethiopia (the periphery states) and non-Arab minorities such as Kurds and Lebanese
Christians. It was hoped that this strategy would “drive a wedge between Israel’s enemies,
weaken the Arab bloc, and halt the spread of pan-Arabism in the region.” [3]
Iran and Israel would soon find themselves facing a common enemy: Egypt. In 1952 a military
coup overthrew King Farouk and dissolved Egypt’s ties from Britain, gaining full independence.
The new government drifted into the Soviet sphere. This greatly worried both Iran and Israel as
both countries feared Soviet interests in the region, “the threat of radical pro-Soviet Arab states,
andboth saw the pan-Arab, anti-Western regime in Cairo, led by Gamal AbdelNasser, as the
main villain of the Middle East.” [4] Iran was especially worried about the Egyptian-Soviet
alliance as they were quite concerned “about the territorial expansionism of pan-Arabism” and
“Arab claims over Iran’s southern oil-rich province of Khuzestan because this pushed Arab
nations to ally against Iran even though their respective national interests may have dictated a
different course.” [5] Thus an alliance of convenience was formed to combat the mutual
Egyptian threat.
This friendship between Israel and Iran went beyond mutual threats and into economics. Due to
the Arab refusal to sell oil to Israel, the Jewish state was in desperate need of oil to continue its
economic growth. Iran was readily able to supply it as after the 1956 Suez crisis they helped to
finance the construction of the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline which connected the gulf of Aqba and the
Mediterranean which allowed Iranian exports to bypass the Suez Canal. This ability to bypass
the Suez was quite important as “73 percent of Iran’s imports and 76 percent of its oil exports
passed through the canal.” The deal eventually deepened Israeli-Iranian ties on the highest
administrative levels as “The pipeline was later upgraded to a sixteen-inch pipe after direct
negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and the Shah in 1958” [6] which was
the first direct meeting between an Israeli Cabinet member and the Shah.
This pipeline was not without consequences, however. While Israel and Iran didn’t reveal their
economic cooperation, the close relationship between the two nations was well known to Arab
states and was subject to intense criticism. Due to Arab sensitivities, the US backed the pipeline
only after it was assured that the pipeline mattered more to the Shah than Arab sentiments as
they sensed the Shah wanting to keep Israel at a friendly distance.
In addition to economic ties, the fact that Iran had a large Jewish community and Israel was a
state meant for Jews was an area of cooperation. Israel wanted to bring Iranian Jews to the
Jewish state and Iran wanted Israel’s level of influence in Washington and needed Israeli
technological know-how to aid Iranian agriculture, with Israel training some 10,000 Iranian
agricultural experts. Finally, the two nations connected due to being the “odd-men out” due to
their non-Arab status in a region dominated by Arabs.
Yet, for all this friendship, there will still other motives at play. While Iran was quite important
to Israel’s overall regional political strategy, Israel was not viewed in the same matter in Iran.
Iran saw Israel as a vehicle to block Soviet- not Arab- regional advances. Iran saw the Soviets as
a greater threat than the Arabs as the Soviets eyed “the oil reserves of the region” and was “using
Nasser’s Egypt as its surrogate to penetrate the Persian Gulf.” [7] In addition to this, the Soviets
were supporting leftist Iranian opposition movements, thus pushing the Shah into the arms of the
United States. However, there was a dark side to the Iranian-Israeli alliance in the form of the
Organization of Information and State Security, also known as the dreaded Savak.
In 1957 the Shah ordered the Savak to form intelligence relations with Mossad and manage
Iran’s dealings with the Jewish state, at the expense of keeping the Iranian Foreign Ministry in
the dark. Mossad secretly trained the Savak in military areas such as pilots, paratroopers, and
artillery men, but also in torture and investigative techniques as well. Those latter techniques
were used to repress political dissent against the Shah and keep his political opponents under
surveillance.
During all this, the diplomatic relationship between the two nations was kept secret. Over the
years Israel had become used to the nature of this relationship, however, they never fully grew
accustomed to Iran’s contradictory stance on Israel. In Israeli minds, if Iran were to fully
recognize Israel it would help advance Israel’s goal in to convincing the Arabs that the Jewish
state was here to stay. While Ben-Gurion’s 1961 visit to Iran was kept secret and thus set the
precedent for keeping such meetings secret, several years later Israeli diplomats urged Prime
Minister Golda Meir to try and convince the Shah to bring Israeli-Iranian dealings out into the
open. She attempted to convince the major Western powers to pressure the Shah to publicly
recognize Israel; however these efforts were rebuffed by the Shah who refused to meet with the
Israeli representative to Iran for more than three years. This may have very well been due to the
fact that the year before Ben-Gurion’s visit, in 1960, Iran learned the hard way the repercussions
of publicly recognizing its relationship with Israel.
In July 1960, when asked by a foreign journalist if Iran was going to recognize Israel, the Shah
referenced Iran’s de facto recognition of Israel in 1950, saying that “Iran has recognized Israel
long ago.” [8] This provoked a fiery response from Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasser who used the
quote to expand Egypt’s regional influence and counter Iran’s growing relations with the Persian
Gulf states in the form of anti-Iranian propaganda. This move marked a shift in Iran’s
relationship with Egypt. Nasser’s propaganda campaign signaled that the traditional base for
anti-Iranian propaganda, Iraq, was now shifting to Egypt. This campaign, coupled with the fact
that Egypt was attempting to build up naval forces that could be sent to the Persian Gulf to play a
supporting role to Iraq in a military confrontation between Iraq and Iran, deeply worried the
Shah. Yet Israel aided Iran due to the fact that
If Iran was weakened by Egypt and Iraq, the Arab side would be bolstered and the Iraqi army
would be freed up to participate in a potential Arab attack on Israel. But as long as Iran balanced
Iraq and diverted the Iraqi armed forces eastward and away from the Jewish State, Israel was
provided with a small but important window of safety. So Israeli intelligence provided Iran—
whose military was constantly preparing for potential Iraqi or Egyptian attacks—with extensive
intelligence on Egyptian military movements and planning. [9]
However, as the 1960s came to a close, the strategic context that enabled an Iranian-Israeli
alliance was beginning to fade.
Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Israel and Iran allied due to the fact that they both faced
common enemies; however, the fact of the matter was that at the end of the day, if the situation
changed where one didn’t need the other, the alliance was finished. Due to the overall political
landscape where Arabs disliked the Israelis more than the Persians, it was more likely that Iran
would bail before Israel did. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s the geo-political landscape drastically
changed as Israel won the 1967 war, the strategy of both the United States and the Soviet Union
switched from containment to détente, and Egypt moved from the Soviet to the US camp. These
events greatly changed the relationship between Israel and Iran.
After the 1967 war, Iran became deeply wary of the Jewish state as while the Shah supported a
strong Israel, he did not favor an Israel that was stronger than Iran. This was not due to any
worries that Israel would attack Iran as Iran was hundreds of miles away and could always
readjust its position to align itself with moderate Arab states. Rather, this worry was due to the
fact that the Shah believed that the ’67 war had changed Israel from a defensive state to an
aggressive one and thus he was concerned about possible Israeli expansion. In addition to this, a
too powerful Israel would create a situation where Israel could potentially “challenge Iran’s
quest for preeminence or its strategic significance in Washington” and “would complicate the
Shah’s balancing act of maintaining strong relations with Israel without angering Iran’s Arab
neighbors.” [10] Unfortunately for the Shah, his fears came to fruition as Israel refused to return
Arab territories that had been captured in the ’67 war.
This caused Iran to freeze all joint Iranian-Israeli projects and adopt a tougher public stance
against Israel, with the Shah arguing in late 1967 for a solution between Israel and the Arab
states to be worked out within the UN. This sudden change in tone caused Washington to seek
clarification regarding Iran’s stance to Israel to ensure that Iran had not fully turned against Tel
Aviv. Iran, with the support of the US and Britain, supported UN Resolution 242 which argued
for an Israeli withdrawal of all captured territory. Tehran also consulted the US to pressure Israel
into taking a more flexible tone with the Arab states as they believed that Israel’s refusal to
withdraw would only exacerbate and prolong the conflict. Yet the Shah was also knew that by
pushing for an Israeli withdrawal, it would allow Iran to warm up to the Arab states and its
support for Resolution 242, which upheld that a state could not acquire territory by war, was also
viewed as a way to protect Iran from possible Arab or Soviet expansionism. Tel Aviv was
disquieted by this sudden change in treatment and became suspicious of the Shah’s intentions.
These suspicions were soon confirmed when Egypt’s change in camps, from the Soviets to the
Americans, drew Iran closer to the Arabs.
Due to Egypt’s defeat at the hands of Israel in the ’67 war, Nasser was forced to reduce his
regional aspirations and while Egypt began to explore the option of leaving the Soviet camp
under Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, an opening occurred which allowed for a friendly
relationship between Iran and Egypt to begin. When Egypt moderated its foreign policy and
recognized Iran’s public support for the Arab position in Resolution 242, it greatly helped to
lower tensions between Tehran and the Arab world by allowing for dialogue to take place
between Tehran and Cairo. Via Kuwaiti mediation, Iran and Egypt began backroom dialogue in
1969 where the Shah forced on Nasser the humiliating conditions that Cairo publicly apologize
to Iran for its previous provocations and the first step toward a normalization of relations had to
be taken by Egypt. While Nasser was not fond of these terms, he begrudgingly accepted them
and also agreed to a joint communiqué which announced the resumption of full diplomatic
relations between Tehran and Cairo in August 1970. Tehran’s influence on Egyptian affairs
didn’t end there as when Sadat came to power, he publicly made a major shift to the Western
camp by expelling over 10,000 Soviet military advisors, but only after he had consulted with the
Shah.
Furthermore, the Shah began to take visible steps toward the Arab camp in the form of
forbidding Iranian officials from “attending the 22nd anniversary of the inception of the Jewish
state at the Israeli mission in Tehran,” “refusing to invite the Israeli head of state to the
celebrations marking 2,500 years of the Persian Empire in October 1971,” [12] and being
extremely critical of Israeli policies. Thus, the thaw between Iran and the Arab world revealed
the weakness of the Iranian-Israeli alliance. As Iran’s power and influence increased, they were
less and less likely to side with Israel in order to resolve their disputes with the Arab world.
For Tel Aviv, Egypt’s switch from the Soviets to the US left Israel’s strategic environment less
clear-cut more and less clear-cut due to the fact that Israel didn’t view the rise of Sadat in a
positive manner. For Israel, Sadat’s rise signaled the formation of a force that would unite under
the banner of pan-Arabism to destroy the Jewish state. While Cairo may have made friends with
Tehran, it did nothing to end Egypt’s animosity towards Israel, as the Yom Kippur later revealed.
Yet, even though it seemed Tel Aviv and Tehran would break up, they still would have to deal
with a common threat: Iraq.
If Iran’s relationship with Egypt had the Shah lowering his guard, it was quickly bought back up
when Iraq began to replace Egypt as Tehran’s main enemy. Acts done by Iraq’s new leader,
Saddam Hussein, such as hosting Iranian opposition elements and signing a Treaty of
Cooperation with the Soviet Union which ensured a 15 year Soviet military and economic
commitment to Iraq caused Tehran to be apprehensive concerning Iraq’s hostile intentions. This
apprehensiveness only increased when the US refused to sell arms to Iran, thus making the
country susceptible to Iraq’s growing military. Yet, while in the Shah’s mind the Soviets were
becoming a threat due to their advances, in reality the situation was such where
the Soviet threat to Iran was growing, not because of direct Soviet advances against Iran but
because of America’s weakening determination to protect Iran. As the U.S.-Soviet strategic
relationship shifted from containment to détente, creating a competitive yet peaceful coexistence
between the United States and the Soviet Union, Israel and Iran’s differing attitudes vis-à-vis
superpower politics became a lesser factor in their bilateral relations. [13]
Israel also saw Iraq as a threat as Israeli strategists “feared that if Iraq emerged as a contender for
the leadership of the Arab world and was willing to take on Israel in a future Israeli-Arab war,
the balance might tip in favor of the Arabs” and they knew that “An Arab alliance with Iraq’s
full participation could overrun Jordan and quickly place the Iraqi army on Israel’s eastern
front.” [14] Thus, with détente changing the dynamics of the region as it created a situation
where the superpowers were less willing to intervene on behalf of their allies and client states
and the rise of an Iraqi threat to both Iranian and Israeli security, cooperation between Tehran
and Tel Aviv became all the more important.
Yet, just when it seemed that the geo-political landscape would force Israel and Iran to cooperate
once again, two events put the alliance on rocky territory: Iran’s quest for regional supremacy
due to the Twin Pillar policy in which the US left the region to the care of Saudi Arabia and Iran
and the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Endnotes
1: Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United
States (Yale University Press, 2007), pg 20
2: Ibid, pg 21
3: Ibid, pg 22
4: Ibid
5: Ibid
6: Ibid, pg 23
7: Ibid, pg 24
8: Ibid, pg 27
9: Ibid, pg 28
10: Ibid, pg 30
11: Ibid, pg 32
12: Ibid
13: Ibid, pg 35
14: Ibid, pgs 34-35