Media Guide: Iran-Israel Relations
/By AIC Senior Research Fellow Andrew Lumsden
As he campaigns to reclaim the premiership he held for over a decade, Israeli Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu has made his country’s cold war with Iran a key part of the campaign. Netanyahu criticizes the United States for engaging in diplomacy with Iran, and his rival, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, for allegedly not committing to unilateral military action against Iran. Under the current government, Netanyahu said, Iran’s rulers can “sleep well at night.”
The conflict between Iran and Israel may not be longstanding, nor rooted in centuries-old religious schisms as is that between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, it has proved to be yet another driver of bloodshed and instability in an already troubled region, with little sign of abatement.
This Media Guide will explore the conflict between Iran and Israel, its origins, impacts and what it could mean for the future of the Middle East.
What Was The Iran-Israel Relationship Like Historically?
“Calculated Ambivalence”
The current enmity between Iran and Israel stands in stark contrast to the two civilizations’ historical relationship and is in fact a very recent development. Biblical tradition tells of the instrumental role Persian monarchs played in ending the Jewish people’s 70-year exile in Babylon and in the construction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
In the 1940s, Iran again played a part in Jewish history, serving on the 11-member United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, a body tasked with presenting proposals for the future status of the British Mandate of Palestine. Iran, along with India and Yugoslavia, opposed partition of the territory into separate Arab and Jewish nations but instead proposed a single federation of autonomous Arab and Jewish states under a representative federal government in Jerusalem. The Committee rejected this proposal by a 7-3 vote, and instead recommended partition. A partition plan was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1947 by a vote of 33-13. Iran joined the 13 predominantly Arab states voting against the measure. The State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948.
Iran’s approach in the early years of Israeli statehood has been described as one of “calculated ambivalence.” On one hand, as a predominantly Islamic country, it sympathized with the Arab positions and voted against Israel’s creation and against its admission to the United Nations. That said, Iran did not participate in violent expressions of Arab opposition to Israel including the Arab invasion in 1948.
Peripheral Alliance
Despite its UN voting record, Iran was viewed by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion as a potential ally. In what has been termed the ‘peripheral doctrine’ or the “periphery concept,” Israel worked to establish close relations with the Middle East’s non-Arab powers as a bulwark against hostile neighboring Arab states. Though initially rebuffing Israeli efforts, Iran’s imperial government granted informal, de facto recognition to Israel in 1950. However, intense pressure from Arab states as well as domestic politicians and religious leaders, including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, prevented the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Nevertheless, between the 1950s and the late 1970s, Israel and Iran would develop what has been described as a “close military and intelligence relationship” as the two powers shared mutual concerns over the rise of Soviet influence and militant Arab nationalism across the region.
In 1958, Israel entered an intelligence-sharing partnership with Iran and Turkey. In the 1970s, the two countries launched joint military research and development projects and engaged in an estimated US$1.2 billion worth of contracts in which Iran supplied oil to Israel in exchange for arms.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 replaced Iran’s monarchy with a theocratic regime headed by the zealously anti-Israel Ayatollah Khomeini, who called Israel a “usurper” of Palestinian land, a “danger” to “the Holy Qur’an and Islam” and a “festering and cancerous Zionist tumor in the body of Islamic countries.” Though the revolution ruptured relations and put the countries on opposite sides of the civil war in Lebanon during the early 1980s, it did not immediately bring a total end to Iran-Israel cooperation.
Both countries still saw the other as a valuable counterweight to a common threat, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. During the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq, Israel is estimated to have funneled more than US$3 billion worth of military equipment to Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini accepted these Israeli arms provided the sales were made through intermediaries. Moreover, during the infamous Iran-Contra affair, Israel served as a conduit for clandestine U.S. arms sales to Iran.
It would only be between the 1990s and the early 2000s that Israel and Iran fully became adversaries, as their mutual enemies, the Soviet Union and Baathist Iraq collapsed, and ideological differences and security concerns came to dominate relations.
What Are The Current Points of Contention Between Iran and Israel?
For Iran, animosity towards Israel is driven in large part by ideology. Iranian leaders still object to the very existence of the State of Israel and have repeatedly called for its dissolution.
In 2020, Ebrahim Raisi, now Iran’s President, called Israel an “illegitimate regime” which will “perish according to God’s promise.” Echoing his predecessor, Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls Israel a “malignant cancerous tumor” which must be “removed and eradicated,” adding that this “is possible and it will happen.” In 2014, he predicted that Israel will not exist in 25 years, and wrote that it must face “elimination” for its “crimes.”
Tehran also sees Israel as both the driving force behind and a partner in efforts by the U.S. to weaken and destabilize the country. Therefore, Iran views its relationships with militant groups and supportive governments throughout the Middle East as crucial to its security.
Though Iran has clarified that its calls for the dissolution of the Israeli state are not calls for the “the massacre of the Jewish [people],” among Israel’s leaders, Iranian rhetoric is taken literally and seriously, particularly in the context of Jewish history. For centuries, acts of mass violence against Jewish communities have been precipitated by anti-Semitic rhetoric, most notably the systematic murder of over six million Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Israel has made clear that it sees Iran as a threat to its existence and is willing to use force to defend itself.
Then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2015 that “seventy years after the murder of six million Jews, Iran’s rulers promise to destroy my country, to murder my people… here’s my message to the rulers of Iran: Your plans to destroy Israel will fail. Israel will not permit any force on Earth to threaten its future. …Israel will do whatever it must do to defend our state and to defend our people.” In 2019, a senior official in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) told the Jerusalem Post that the military’s current priorities all “have one address: Iran.” Yair Lapid, Israel’s Foreign Minister and current Prime Minister wrote in March 2022, that “the Iranians want to destroy Israel. They will not succeed. We will not let them.”
Israel wants Iran neutralized as a threat to its security. It believes that the production of nuclear weapons is the ultimate aim of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, contrary to Tehran’s repeated claims of peaceful development. Israel fears such a weapon would be used against it. Therefore, Israeli leaders are wary of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a deal between Iran, the U.S., UK, France, China, Russia and Germany which promised reduction of sanctions on Iran in exchange for strict limits on the country’s nuclear program. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018, and Iran ended compliance in 2020. Negotiations however, are currently underway to restore the agreement.
Israel objects to any re-implementation of the JCPOA, believing it to be ineffective in curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and has suggested it will use military force against Iran if it believes the danger Tehran poses is not being properly addressed. Meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in July 2022, Prime Minister Lapid said of Iran, “words will not stop them,...diplomacy will not stop them,” only a “credible military threat” can.
Israel also has expressed a desire to see Iran’s theocratic government overthrown and replaced with a democratic regime. In an address marking the Persian New Year in March 2022, then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett expressed the hope that Iranians would “rid yourselves of this cruel and ruthless regime” and that the new year would see Iranians freed from Tehran’s “shackles of oppression.”
Proxy War
Though Iran and Israel have not gone to war, their conflict extends far beyond the realm of rhetoric. Both sides, through the use of proxies, allies and surreptitious activities, have worked to damage and undermine the other.
This proxy conflict, as most do, has helped to exacerbate existing wars across the Middle East, particularly in neighboring Syria and Lebanon. Unlike most proxy wars however, the Iran-Israel conflict has at times seen the home territories of both conflicting states become battlegrounds.
Lebanon
Sharing a border with Israel and deeply divided along religious lines, Lebanon has featured prominently in the Iran-Israel conflict, and has over the past four decades, seen fierce clashes between Israeli forces and Iranian-backed militants.
Iran’s principal ally in Lebanon is Hezbollah, a Shia organization formed during Lebanon’s sectarian civil war in the 1980s, which remains potent both as a militant and political force in the country to this day. In addition to an estimated 20,000 fighters, Hezbollah controls 13 seats in Lebanon’s Parliament, in which its coalition had a majority between 2018 and 2022. The group considers itself at war with Israel, which it calls an “eternal threat to Lebanon” and the “greatest danger to our future generations.”
Hezbollah is considered a proxy of Iran, a characterization all but confirmed by the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah credits Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, with a role in the foundation of the group, and claims to have “pledged allegiance to him in person and directly.” Tehran provides the group with an estimated US$700 million a year in funding, along with armaments including rockets and short-range missiles. Iran views Hezbollah as a key component in its “chain of resistance” against Israel. Israel considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization and sees it as an arm with which Tehran can undermine the Jewish state. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren has said that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon constitute a “strategic arc” that poses the “greatest danger to Israel.”
Since the 1990s, Hezbollah is known or suspected of having carried out multiple attacks including rocket strikes, suicide bombings and kidnappings against targets in Israel itself and against Israeli embassies and Jewish communities in other countries, including Argentina and Bulgaria. According to Israel, Hezbollah’s attacks have resulted in the deaths of “hundreds of innocent civilians.” Hezbollah has also had important military successes against Israel. In 2000, years of Hezbollah attacks and suicide bombings led to the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Southern Lebanon. The region had been occupied since the 1980s ostensibly to prevent attacks on Northern Israel, and was administered by the South Lebanese Army (SLA), a Lebanese Christian militia, considered a proxy of Israel, which collapsed soon after Israeli forces pulled out.
In 2006, Israel again invaded Southern Lebanon in response to rocket attacks on Israeli border settlements and a raid which resulted in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers and the capture of two. The war is considered to have yielded mixed results. While Hezbollah took heavy losses, it was not destroyed. A study by the U.S. Army War College found that Hezbollah militants inflicted more casualties per fighter against the Israeli military than any of Israel’s state opponents since the 1948 war.
Through Hezbollah, Iran can wield considerable political sway in Lebanon, a state key to its strategic interests, while successfully expelling Israeli, and by extension, Western political influence. Tensions between the group and Israel persist. In 2020, the two sides exchanged fire along the Israel-Lebanon border in what allegedly was an attempt by Hezbollah to infiltrate Israeli territory. In July 2022, Israeli aircraft intercepted three unarmed Hezbollah drones which had crossed into Israeli airspace. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the incursion, stating the drones were deployed for “intelligence gathering purposes.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid listed launching a “campaign” against Iran and Hezbollah as among his new government’s top priorities. Lapid has also warned that Hezbollah attacks on Israel could “lead the entire region to an unnecessary escalation.”
Syria
Indeed, Israel’s conflict with Iran and Hezbollah has already contributed to the escalation of a regional conflict, the decade-long civil war in Syria. Beginning as a popular uprising in 2012 against the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Civil War has devolved into a horrific, multi-faceted melee which has caused over 350,000 deaths and made Syria a battleground in several proxy conflicts.
Iran considers Syria a strategic ally and a member of its “chain of resistance” against Israel. At the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Iran provided the Assad government with financial, intelligence and military support. In addition to deploying members of its own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Tehran enlisted, trained and paid men from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to fight in Syria. Hezbollah has also been active in the Syrian war since at least late 2012.
The intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria inflamed Israeli fears that the war could result in a permanent and substantial Iranian military presence in Syria, a country that borders Israel, and provide an opportunity for Hezbollah to access more advanced weaponry from its Iranian, Syrian and Russian co-belligerents.
Since the beginning of the war, Israel has launched hundreds of air and missile strikes against targets in Syria aimed at destroying and interdicting shipments of Russian and Iranian arms believed to be en route to Hezbollah. Israel has also directly attacked Iranian military installations in Syria, such as in 2018 when it destroyed an Iranian-manned airbase near Palmyra after a drone launched from the site violated Israeli airspace. In July 2022, Israel also struck an alleged IRGC warehouse near Damascus and Iran-supplied anti-aircraft systems based near the coastal city of Tartus which allegedly were to be transferred to Hezbollah.
Israel and the Palestinian Territories
As it battles Iranian allies in Lebanon and Syria, Israel faces Iran-backed threats much closer to home. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories which were to have been part of a Palestinian state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, but had been occupied respectively by Jordan and Egypt since 1948.
Israeli occupation would lead to the creation of Palestinian militant groups seeking to force the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza and create an independent Palestinian state. Though many such groups exist, Israeli leaders often single out Hamas as the principal Palestinian threat to Israel’s security.
Founded in the 1980s as an offshoot of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas calls the establishment of Israel “entirely illegal,” and has pledged to create a “fully sovereign” Palestinian state “with Jerusalem as its capital” through “armed resistance.” The group also rejects any diplomatic solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas is officially a political party, with a wing called the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades which carries out militant operations.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Hamas launched suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and other acts of terrorism, against mostly civilian targets in Israel. In 2006, following Israel’s military withdrawal from the territory, victories in legislative elections and a brief armed conflict with a more moderate rival Palestinian party, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli military, Hamas and other militant groups have since fired more than 8000 rockets into Israel. Israel has launched several military operations in the Gaza Strip since 2008, including most recently in July 2022, but has failed to permanently neutralize the militant threat.
While not a proxy of Tehran like Hezbollah, Hamas has a longstanding relationship with Iran, which its leader Ismail Haniyeh, has praised for backing his group “financially, politically and militarily.” On social media, Haniyeh added that Tehran “has not skimped in extending funds, weaponry, and technology” to Hamas. It is estimated that Iran has been funding Hamas since at least the 1990s, and provided some US$20-US$50 million annually during that decade. By 2012, the flow of Iranian aid to Hamas is estimated to have reached about US$23 million a month. After a brief rift over the Syrian Civil War, in which Iran and Hamas backed opposite sides of the conflict, high-level talks between Hamas and Iranian officials led to a rekindling of the relationship. By 2018, Iran reportedly had resumed aid to Hamas at a rate of about US$5 million a month.
Iran has also confirmed sending rockets to Hamas and aiding the group in producing its own rockets domestically. In 2014, perhaps indicating future Iranian plans to arm other Palestinian militant groups, Ayatollah Khamenei wrote “we strengthened our Palestinian brothers’ fist in Gaza [and] other areas…[the] West Bank should also be armed like Gaza.”
Iran
In May 2022, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that despite launching attacks on Israel through its “emissaries” for decades, Iran itself has “enjoyed immunity" from retaliation. However, Tehran says it has in fact been on the receiving end of attacks by Israel and organizations allied with the Jewish state for many years.
Assassinations and Cyberattacks
Iran accuses Israel of backing the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian leftist organization opposed to the country’s theocratic government. Once militant, the MEK is known or believed to be responsible for many acts of terror including the assassinations of high-level Iranian government figures, including President Mohammad-Ali Rajai in 1981. The group also joined forces with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and took part in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The MEK was disarmed during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and de-listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. in 2012.
However, Iran says that MEK attacks are ongoing. Since 2007, at least six top Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated, the most recent killing taking place in 2020. Tehran blames the assassinations on the MEK, acting with payment, information, training and other support from Israeli intelligence. The group denies any involvement with either Israel or the assassinations.
Whether or not the MEK is involved, there is much speculation, including by U.S. officials, that Israel is behind the assassinations and other cyber attacks and acts of sabotage in Iran, including the disruption of the country’s fuel distribution systems in 2021. Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon hinted that the Jewish state may be behind attacks on Iran, saying that Israel “will act in any way” and will not “tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Ethnic Separatism
Iran is a diverse country, with about 40% of its citizens coming from a non-Persian ethnic community. Many minority communities in Iran have faced many forms of institutional discrimination, sometimes going back centuries, and this has contributed to sometimes violent expressions of anti-government and separatist sentiment in some parts of the country; violence Tehran says Israel is helping to foment.
Iran accuses Israel of backing ethnic Kurdish and ethnic Baloch militants operating in the country. Though there is little evidence that Kurdish groups are receiving Israeli support beyond Israel’s past backing of Kurdish rebels in 1960s Iraq, there have been claims by U.S. intelligence that Israel has been involved with a Baloch militant organization called the Jundallah.
Operating in Iran’s majority Sunni and ethnic Baloch, Sistan-Balochistan Province, the Jundallah was formed in 2003 and has carried out kidnappings, ambushes and bombings on government and civilian targets, allegedly including the motorcade of then-President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in 2005 and six senior IRGC officers in 2009. Iran blames the group for the deaths of more than 150 security personnel and civilians.
The Jundallah’s stated goal was to achieve “equal rights” for Iran’s Sunni and Baloch communities which face institutional discrimination, however, in 2009, Iran’s then Interior Minister blamed “Americans and Israelis" for the group’s actions. The U.S. denied any responsibility, but CIA intelligence memos claim that Israeli spies did recruit members for the Jundallah, which has since splintered following the capture and execution of its leader in 2010.
“Immunity is Over”
In May 2022, Israel’s then Prime Minister Naftali Bennett suggested that Israel would be stepping up direct attacks on Iran, saying that “the era of the Iranian regime's immunity is over,” and that Tehran “will pay the full price” for the actions it and its allies have taken against Israel.
In July 2022, Iranian authorities claimed to have arrested at least two groups of Israeli agents in the country. On July 23, Tehran said it captured Israeli agents crossing into Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan armed with “weapons, explosives, technical and communications equipment,” and an intent to carry out “terrorist operations.” On July 28, Tehran claimed to have arrested a five-member Israeli “espionage network,” who also had “advanced equipment,” were trained for “armed operations and sabotage” and tasked with collecting information on “vital areas'' in Iran. The veracity of these claims is unknown and Israel has refused to comment.
Future Outlook
When asked about recent cyberattacks allegedly carried out by Israel in 2021, a Tehran taxi driver told The New York Times, “it isn’t our fault our governments are enemies. It’s already hard enough for us to survive.” Already, the Iran-Israel conflict has caused pain for civilians across the region, and in the event of armed conflict between the two sides, it is very likely the civilian populations of both combatant states and their neighbors, who will bear the brunt of the destruction.
It is important that Iran’s leaders understand that continuing to traffic in violent rhetoric against Israel serves no benefit. The dissolution of Israel is not a realistic aspiration, and it is Iran, not Israel, that is becoming increasingly isolated regionally as more Arab states begin normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Israel, for its part, has the right to defend itself, but should not dismiss the value of international diplomacy with Tehran. There is evidence that the 2015 nuclear deal was succeeding in its objectives and the 2018 U.S. withdrawal from the deal has only led to the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran and Israel at one time, not particularly long ago, understood the importance of putting disagreements aside and cooperating in areas of mutual interest. While the threats of old, Soviet communism, pan-Arabism and Iraqi Baathism have all passed, new ones like climate change and extremist terrorism have emerged and future cooperation could yield mutual benefit for both sides.
