Iran has said that its April 12 attacks on Israel were in response to Israeli war jets targeting an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month, leading to the death of its senior military commanders.
The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, said, “This operation could have been a large-scale operation, but we limited the scope of the operation to that part of the capabilities that the Zionist regime had used to attack the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran and martyr the commanders.”
While drones and missiles were fired at Israel on Sunday, no significant casualties have been reported so far. Iran has claimed to have caused damage to one Israeli military facility.
Concerns have been raised ever since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis, that a wider regional conflict could happen in the Middle East, with the two powers at the centre of it.
However, their relationship has not always been as fraught as it is today. Iran was one of the first countries in the region to recognise Israel after its formation in 1948. It was only after 1979 that their diplomatic ties ended.
Pre-1979 Iran-Israel ties
In 1948, the opposition of Arab states to Israel led to the first Arab-Israeli war. Iran was not a part of that conflict, and after Israel won, it established ties with the Jewish state. It was the second Muslim-majority country to do so after Turkey.
As an analysis from the Brookings Institute (‘Iran’s revolution, 40 years on: Israel’s reverse periphery doctrine’) notes, Israel tried to counter the hostility of Arab states at the time with the “periphery doctrine” under its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.
He attempted “to forge an alliance with non-Arab (yet mostly Muslim) countries in the Middle East… Chief among these non-Arab partners were Turkey and pre-revolution Iran, countries who had (then) a common orientation toward the West and their own reasons to feel isolated in the Middle East.”
The Pahlavi dynasty, under the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled Iran then. It had US support, as did Israel, and the two countries maintained ties with each other, with Iran also selling oil to Israel amid its economic boycott by Arab states.
The 1979 revolution
A religious state was established in Iran after the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The regime’s view of Israel changed, and it was seen as an occupier of Palestinian land.
Israel’s Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini termed Israel “Little Satan” and the United States the “Great Satan”, seeing the two as parties interfering in the region. Iran also sought to grow its presence in the region, challenging the two major powers Saudi Arabia and Israel – both of whom were US allies.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had long championed the idea of “pan-Arabism” in the region, for the cultural commonalities between the Arab states to be translated into larger solidarity and unity. This put Iran, a non-Arab country, at odds with it.
With the death of Nasser in 1970, Iran’s relations with countries such as Egypt warmed. An article in Israeli media outlet Haaretz noted, “Furthermore, the signing of an accord between Iran and Iraq in 1975 – in which Iran agreed to stop arming Kurdish-Iraqi separatists – led to a temporary lessening of hostility between those implacable enemies. In both cases, Israel’s strategic value to Iran suffered.”
A Shadow War after 1979
As a result, the ties between the countries worsened. While Israel and Iran have never engaged in direct military confrontation, both have attempted to inflict damage on the other through proxies and limited strategic attacks.
Israel has attacked Iranian nuclear facilities from time to time. In the early 2010s, it targeted several facilities and nuclear scientists in a bit to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
In 2010, the US and Israel are believed to have developed Stuxnet, a malicious computer virus. Used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, it was the “first publicly known cyberattack on industrial machinery”, according to Reuters.
Iran, meanwhile, is seen as responsible for funding and supporting several militant groups in the region that are anti-Israel and anti-US, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
This support was why concerns of a widening conflict or a confrontation have been raised in the last few months. Along with how Iran, its proxies and Israel react in the various situations that have unfolded, a significant factor is the US reaction.
President Joe Biden has been largely supportive of longtime ally Israel’s “right to defend” itself, even in the face of global and domestic criticism over the thousands of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip. With the US presidential elections due this year, he would not want to be seen involving the country in the conflict far away from home, while also keeping its commitments to Israel. The tightrope-walking has, therefore, added to the uncertainty.