From Friends to Foes: How Israel and Iran Turned Into Arch-enemies
"TRUMP APPROVES STRIKES ON IRAN, BUT THEN ABRUPTLY PULLS BACK"
A bite of history when times were better there. The photo of senior defense people meeting, seen from a present perspective, is quite something. Power politics sucks.
The two countries enjoyed good relations for 30 years, but since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Israel and Iran have been a study in enmity – despite not sharing a border or having any territorial disputes
By David B. Green May 08, 2018
[...]
Senior Iranian defense officials with Israeli counterparts at the IDF headquarters, 1975 Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
[...]
Hard as it may be to imagine now – as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a full-court press to convince the United States to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran – but a mere two years before the Islamic Revolution, Israel and Iran cooperated on “Project Flower,” a joint plan to develop a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead.
During the ’60s and ’70s, Israel had so many contractors and military advisers resident in Tehran, a Hebrew-language school was opened there for Israeli children. And El Al operated regular flights between Tel Aviv and the Iranian capital.
Beginning of the end
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivering a speech on the 18th anniversary of the death of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, in Tehran, June 2007. AP
Just as the relationship flowered in response to larger political conditions, it also came to an end because of larger geopolitical changes. The death of Nasser in 1970 and the ascension of Anwar Sadat led to a warming of relations between Egypt and Iran. 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.
All the while, Islamic clerics in Iran kept up a stream of negative indoctrination against Israel. For example, in an article for Iranica Online, the Israeli scholar Prof. David Menashri quotes Khomeini in 1971 as describing Israel as having “penetrated all the economic, military, and political affairs” of his country, and turning it into “a military base for Israel.”
When the shah was overthrown in a popular uprising in 1979, and his authoritarian secular regime was replaced by a no-less-oppressive Islamic one, the relationship with Israel was one of the first things to go.
Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France on February 1, 1979, and less than three weeks later – on February 18 – he severed relations with Israel. Adding insult to injury, Khomeini turned the evacuated Israeli Embassy over to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
