On Saturday 23rd December, Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi warned that the Mediterranean Sea would be “closed” if the US and Israel continued war crimes in Gaza, as reported by Reuters and The Hill. Naqdi added that the closure of the Strait of Gibraltar and of other waterways should be expected, even if it is not clear how Iran would get to the western end of the Mediterranean given that its major allies are all located in the Middle East – notably, in Lebanon and in Syria. Moreover, Iranian Brigadier General Razi Mousavi was killed in Damascus in an alleged Israeli airstrike on 25th December, prompting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to vow that Israel “will certainly pay for this crime”, as reported in the Times of Israel and Bloomberg.The prospects of an escalation of violence between Iran and Israel will be analysed through a historical perspective of their bilateral relations within broader Middle East dynamics.
Iran was not hostile to Israel under the Pahlavi dynasty. Iran was one of the 11 members of the Special United Nations committee that was formed in 1947 to devise a solution for Palestine after British control of the territory ended, and it was notably one of the only three to vote against the UN’s partition plan for Palestine. This was mainly due to concerns that the creation of the State of Israel would escalate violence in the region for generations to come. “Iran, alongside India and Yugoslavia, came up with an alternative plan, a federal solution which intended to keep Palestine as one state with one parliament but divided into Arab and Jewish cantons,” University of Oxford historian Eirik Kvindesland told Al Jazeera.
However, two years after Israel expanded beyond the UN borders established at the start of the first Arab Israeli War, Iran became the second Muslim-majority (after Turkey) country to recognise Israel. This also happened in the context of Ben Gurion’s “periphery doctrine”, which had as an objective the end of Israel’s isolation through the strengthening of bilateral relationships with non-Arab states bordering the Middle East, like Ethiopia but most importantly Turkey and Iran. In the 1950s, anti-Zionist movements began to spread in Iran, in parallel to the fight against British monopoly of oil. However, Iranian foreign policy was, overall, driven by the need to make alliances, so little concern was devoted to the establishment of Israel itself and its consequences for the Palestinian people. Things changed after the Islamic Revolution broke out.
In 1979, the Islamic Revolution brought together Iranians from various social groups and culminated with the toppling of the monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, wanted to confront arrogant world powers and their regional allies. This marked the beginning of the Iranian rhetoric of the “Little Satan” (Israel) and the “Great Satan” (the USA). Subsequently, Teheran severed diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, transforming the Israeli embassy into the Palestinian embassy. Today, Iran supports a so-called resistance axis network of political and armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen to support the Palestinian cause – they all view Israel as a major enemy. In response, over the years, Israel has backed a variety of groups who are violently opposed to the Iranian establishment, some of them being designated by Iran as terrorist organisations.
Overall, the series of attacks on each other’s interests within and outside Iranian and Israeli soils is sometimes referred to as the “shadow war”, a kind of conflict they both publicly deny. According to the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique, Iran and Israel are engaged in a battle of covert operations, targeted assassinations, and drone strikes, and, although Tel Aviv does not usually divulge much about its foreign operations, the level of conflict is such that former Israeli chief of staff, Aviv Kohavi, admitted that Israel conducts an operation against Iran roughly every month.
Furthermore, since Netanyahu became Prime Minister, Iran has always been a favourite target: his recurring theme is that of an existential struggle against Iranian denial of Israel’s legitimacy, which has also been fuelled by advances in Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, Israel has vowed to never allow Iran to develop its nuclear program, even though Iran claimed its nuclear program is only for civilian and not military use. Still, talks in Vienna between Western countries and Iran over its nuclear programs have not gone very far since Trump withdrew from the JCPOA (the “Iranian nuclear deal”), so it is difficult to know what kind of nuclear program Iran is implementing. Moreover, Tehran blames Israel for committing many sabotage attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. Ironically, it is widely believed that Israel possesses atomic weapons, although it does not allow the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to inspect its nuclear sites.
Moreover, several Arab states in the region have chosen to normalise their relations with Israel as they seek more Western support. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the other powerhouse in the region, restored diplomatic relations with Iran this year, following an agreement brokered by China in March. However, while the US has been trying to mediate a similar deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, any prospect of normalisation between Tel Aviv and Riyadh has been put on hold, at least for now, as Israel continues to bomb Gaza, causing the death of more than 20,000 people as of today. For the current establishment in Iran, any rapprochement with Israel is even more out of the question. Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says that while common security imperatives in the past led the two to become allies, the threat from pan Arabism and the Soviet empire vanished in the early 1990s. Instead, Tehran opposes US hegemony in the Middle East while Israel has consistently pushed back against any efforts in Washington to bring American troops home from the region.
In conclusion, the relationship between Iran and Israel is not based on friendship or tolerance. Fortunately, the belligerents are showing restraint for now, and civilians are being spared from their conflict: only the enemy’s symbols of power are targeted. In the short term, as no peaceful dialogue can realistically be expected from the two regional powers, the international community must ensure that tensions do not escalate further, even though, given their modus operandi, it is probable that it does. According to Parsi, it’s a “rivalry for dominance and power in the region, the two states have been embroiled in a low-level war for more than a decade”, and in this context Tehran and Tel Aviv agree on at least one point: their war is a secret one.
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