The enmity feels ancient. It feels biblical. It feels immovable.
It is none of those things.
For three decades from Israel's founding in 1948 to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 these two nations were not merely at peace. They were, in the careful language of intelligence services, friends. It is one of history's most thoroughly forgotten alliances, erased from memory partly because both sides now find it inconvenient, and partly because it ended with the speed and finality of a guillotine.

The Logic of the Periphery

Israel's founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was above all a practical man. He surveyed the map of the Middle East and saw something bleak: his new nation was surrounded by Arab states sworn to its destruction. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq are all hostile. Arab unity, however fractious in practice, was united on one thing: Israel had no right to exist.

So Ben-Gurion looked beyond the Arabs. He called it the 'Peripheral Alliance' a strategic doctrine built on the idea that Israel should cultivate relationships with the non Arab states on the edges of the Arab world. Turkey, Ethiopia, and above all, Iran. These were countries that shared Israel's anxiety about Arab nationalism, about Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's ambitions, about the creeping influence of the Soviet Union. They were not friends of Israel out of warmth. They were friends out of geometry.

Iran fits the theory perfectly. It was large, powerful, non Arab, and governed by a Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who looked west for his models, his weapons, and his allies. The Shah feared Nasser. He feared Soviet influence. He feared the kind of revolutionary nationalism that might someday sweep away his throne. Israel shared every one of those fears. And so, quietly, the two countries found each other.

"There was a time when an Iranian general and an Israeli colonel could sit down over tea and not feel the absurdity of that meeting."

Oil, Intelligence, and a Secret Pipeline

The practical dimensions of the relationship were real and consequential. Iran supplied Israel with the vast majority of its oil, some estimates place the figure at 80 percent during the peak years of the alliance. Without Iranian crude, Israel's economy would have faced critical shortages.

In exchange, Israel provided something Iran needed just as much: expertise. Israeli military officers worked alongside Iranian counterparts. Israeli agricultural technicians trained Iranian farmers. And most significantly, Israeli intelligence officers helped build and train SAVAK, the Shah's feared internal security service. SAVAK would go on to become one of the most feared secret police forces in the world, infamous for torture and repression. That it was partly shaped by Israeli advisors is a fact both nations prefer not to discuss.

The two countries also built the Eilat Ashkelon pipeline together, a conduit that moved Iranian crude from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, bypassing the Arab controlled Suez Canal. It was infrastructure built on mutual need, and it worked. From 1968 onward, it symbolized everything the alliance was: practical, profitable, and deliberately invisible.

The Man in Exile

While all of this was happening, a cleric sat in the Iraqi city of Najaf and recorded cassette tapes. Ruhollah Khomeini had been expelled from Iran in 1964, after he publicly denounced the Shah's relationship with the United States and Israel. From exile, his sermons were copied onto cassette tapes and smuggled back into Iran by the thousands, circulating through mosques, bazaars, and university dormitories.

His message was both theological and ferociously political: the Shah's Iran had surrendered its sovereignty to foreign powers. America had bought the country. Israel had been handed its embassy. Islam, properly practiced, offered not just salvation but liberation. Those cassette tapes were, in retrospect, the soundtrack of a revolution that had not happened yet.

The End of Everything

In December 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Tehran and delivered a toast that would become one of modern diplomacy's most embarrassing miscalculations. He called Iran 'an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world.' He praised the Shah's leadership. He raised his glass.

One year later, the Shah was fleeing his own country. On February 18, 1979, just over two weeks after Khomeini returned from exile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat flew to Tehran and was handed the keys to what had been Israel's embassy. The Israeli flag came down. The Palestinian flag went up.

A thirty-year friendship was over. What replaced it would define the Middle East for the next half century and is still defining it today, in the rubble and smoke of a conflict that both countries' own choices made inevitable.

#iran #israel #war #peace #diplomacy #oil #security #history #tehran #general #ethiopia

Read More:

Part 2 "How Iran's 1979 Revolution Changed the
Middle East Forever" -  https://dhunt.in/13CW4d

Part 3 "Who Was Qassem Soleimani? The Man
America Killed And Why It Mattered" - https://dhunt.in/13CF1K

Part 4 "Iran's Nuclear Program: The Full Timeline
From Secret Bunkers to U.S. Airstrikes" - https://dhunt.in/13BVR9

Part 5 "How Israel Has Been Secretly Killing Iran's
Scientists for 15 Years" -  https://dhunt.in/13CQR0

Part 6 "From October 7 to the Fall of Hezbollah: How Israel Dismantled
Iran's Empire" - https://dhunt.in/13BNSK

Part 7 "Khamenei Is Dead. Who Was He And What
Happens to Iran Now?" - https://dhunt.in/13BWmD

Part 8 "What Comes After Khamenei? Three
Futures for Iran - and the World" -  https://dhunt.in/13CXl0