History of Iran-Israel Relations

When Israel declared independence in May 1948, Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became one of the first Muslim-majority nations to extend de facto recognition to the new state. This was not a sentimental gesture — it was a calculated strategic alignment that would define both countries for three decades.

The Doctrine of the Periphery

Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, developed the "Periphery Doctrine" — the idea that Israel should cultivate alliances with non-Arab states on the edges of the Arab world to counterbalance the hostile bloc of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia became the pillars of this strategy.

For the Shah, the logic was symmetrical. Iran, a Persian and predominantly Shia nation, faced its own tensions with the Sunni Arab world. Israel offered a discreet but invaluable partner: technologically advanced, militarily capable, and equally interested in containing Arab nationalism — particularly the revolutionary ideology of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Intelligence Cooperation: SAVAK and Mossad

The centerpiece of the Iran-Israel partnership was the deep cooperation between their intelligence services. Israel's Mossad helped train Iran's SAVAK (secret police) in counterintelligence, surveillance techniques, and interrogation methods. In return, SAVAK shared intelligence on Arab states and assisted Mossad operations across the region.

Oil and Economics

Iran became Israel's primary oil supplier, providing as much as 90% of Israel's petroleum needs during certain periods. This oil flowed through the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, which was partially financed with Iranian investment. The trade was worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually — a lifeline for the energy-poor Israeli economy.

Project Flower

In perhaps the most ambitious dimension of the alliance, Israel and Iran secretly collaborated on missile development. "Project Flower" (1977–1979) aimed to develop a new surface-to-surface missile system using Israeli technology and Iranian funding. The project was abruptly terminated by the Islamic Revolution.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was not merely a change of government — it was a civilizational rupture that transformed every dimension of Iran's foreign policy. In the span of months, one of Israel's closest allies became its most implacable ideological enemy.

Khomeini's Anti-Zionism

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had been railing against the Shah's alliance with Israel from exile for over a decade. He viewed Israel not as a legitimate state but as an illegitimate colonial implant in the Islamic world, and the Shah's friendship with it as evidence of his subservience to Western imperialism. For Khomeini, opposition to Israel was inseparable from opposition to the Pahlavi monarchy.

Within days of taking power in February 1979, Khomeini severed all diplomatic ties with Israel. In a gesture loaded with symbolism, he handed the Israeli embassy in Tehran to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Yasser Arafat became the first foreign leader to visit the new Islamic Republic.

Al-Quds Day

In August 1979, Khomeini declared the last Friday of Ramadan as "International Al-Quds Day" (Jerusalem Day), calling on Muslims worldwide to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and against Israel. The annual event became a fixture of Iranian revolutionary culture, with mass rallies, chants of "Death to Israel," and burning of Israeli and American flags.

The Hostage Crisis and Global Isolation

The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in November 1979, in which 52 American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days, cemented Iran's break with the Western order. Israel, deeply embedded in that order, was doubly condemned. Yet, as the next chapter reveals, the reality beneath the rhetoric was far more complex.

The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) exposed one of the great paradoxes of Middle Eastern geopolitics: even as Iran declared Israel its mortal enemy, the two countries maintained clandestine cooperation driven by mutual strategic interests.

Israel Arms Iran

When Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, Iran found itself diplomatically isolated and desperately short of military supplies. Its American-equipped military — built under the Shah — needed Western spare parts that few were willing to provide.

Israel stepped in. Between 1981 and 1987, Israel sold an estimated $500 million per year in weapons and spare parts to Iran, including critical components for F-4 Phantom jets, tank ammunition, and anti-aircraft systems. The logic was classically Israeli: Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was the greater immediate threat. In 1981, Israel had already bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Keeping Iran fighting Iraq served Israeli strategic interests.

The Iran-Contra Affair

This secret arms trade became the subject of global scandal when the Iran-Contra affair broke in 1986. It was revealed that the United States, with Israeli facilitation, had been selling weapons to Iran and diverting the proceeds to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Israel served as both broker and conduit, managing shipments of TOW anti-tank missiles and HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran.

The affair demonstrated that beneath the surface of ideological enmity, a pragmatic transactional relationship persisted. Iran's Revolutionary Guard accepted Israeli-sourced weapons even as Khomeini's regime called for Israel's destruction.

The War's Aftermath

The Iran-Iraq War ended in a stalemate in 1988, having killed an estimated one million people and devastating both countries' economies. For the Iran-Israel relationship, the war marked the last period of meaningful (if covert) cooperation. The channels of communication that had survived the revolution would gradually close in the 1990s as a new dynamic took hold: proxy warfare.

The creation of Hezbollah in 1982 marked the beginning of Iran's most consequential strategic innovation: the use of armed proxy organizations to project power across the Middle East without direct military confrontation. This model would define the Iran-Israel rivalry for decades.

The Birth of Hezbollah

When Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982 to drive out the PLO, it inadvertently created the conditions for something far more dangerous. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dispatched approximately 1,500 operatives to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where they began training, arming, and organizing Shia militants into what would become Hezbollah ("Party of God").

Hezbollah combined Islamic revolutionary ideology with sophisticated guerrilla tactics. Unlike the PLO, it was not a national liberation movement but a transnational Islamist force, loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader and committed to the destruction of Israel as a religious obligation.

Devastating Attacks

The AMIA Bombing

The 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires remains the deadliest anti-Semitic attack since World War II outside of Israel. Argentine prosecutors concluded that the bombing was planned by senior Iranian officials, including the intelligence minister, and carried out by Hezbollah operatives. Iran has denied involvement, but the attack demonstrated that the Iran-Israel conflict had global reach.

The 2006 Lebanon War

In July 2006, Hezbollah launched a cross-border raid into Israel, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two. Israel responded with a 34-day air and ground campaign that devastated southern Lebanon but failed to destroy Hezbollah. The war exposed the extent to which Iran had transformed Hezbollah into a sophisticated military force, equipped with thousands of rockets capable of striking deep into Israeli territory. An estimated 4,000 rockets were fired at Israel during the conflict.

In August 2002, an Iranian dissident group revealed the existence of two previously secret nuclear facilities: a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water reactor at Arak. The disclosure transformed the Iran-Israel dynamic. What had been a conflict of ideology and proxy warfare now acquired a potential existential dimension.

Israel's Existential Alarm

For Israel, an Iranian nuclear weapon represented the one threat that could not be managed through deterrence, proxies, or limited strikes. A single nuclear device could destroy the entire state. This assessment drove Israeli policy into a posture of near-permanent crisis, with successive prime ministers declaring Iran's nuclear program the single greatest threat to national survival.

Stuxnet: The World's First Cyber Weapon

In 2010, the world discovered Stuxnet — a sophisticated computer worm jointly developed by the United States and Israel (under the code name "Olympic Games") that had been silently destroying Iranian centrifuges at Natanz since 2007. The malware caused centrifuges to spin at erratic speeds while displaying normal readings to operators, destroying approximately 1,000 of Iran's 5,000 operational centrifuges.

Assassinations of Nuclear Scientists

Between 2010 and 2020, at least five Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated in targeted killings widely attributed to Israel's Mossad. The most prominent was Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, considered the "father" of Iran's nuclear weapons program, who was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun in November 2020. Iran accused Israel directly, and Supreme Leader Khamenei vowed retaliation.

Israel's Nuclear Archive Operation

In January 2018, Mossad agents conducted a daring raid on a Tehran warehouse, extracting half a ton of documents from Iran's secret nuclear archive. The files, which Prime Minister Netanyahu dramatically presented on live television in April 2018, provided evidence that Iran had conducted weapons design work under a program code-named "AMAD." The operation was intended to undermine the JCPOA by proving Iran had lied about its nuclear intentions.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in July 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 powers (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany), was either the most significant diplomatic achievement regarding Iran's nuclear program or a dangerous exercise in appeasement — depending entirely on who was asked.

Terms of the Deal

Netanyahu's Campaign Against the Deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waged an extraordinary public campaign against the JCPOA, including a controversial address to the U.S. Congress in March 2015 — arranged without coordination with the Obama administration. Netanyahu argued that the deal merely delayed Iran's path to a weapon while immediately releasing billions in frozen assets that would fund terrorism and proxy warfare.

Trump's Withdrawal (2018)

In May 2018, President Donald Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA and reimposed "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran. The decision was heavily influenced by Israeli advocacy and by the nuclear archive intelligence that Mossad had provided. Iran initially remained within the deal's constraints, waiting for European partners to provide economic relief that never materialized.

Iran's Escalation (2019–2020)

Beginning in mid-2019, Iran began systematically exceeding JCPOA limits: enriching above 3.67%, stockpiling more than 300kg of enriched uranium, and installing advanced centrifuges at Fordow. Each step was announced publicly as a "remedial measure" in response to U.S. sanctions, but the cumulative effect was a dramatic acceleration of Iran's nuclear capabilities. The breakout time — the period needed to produce enough fissile material for one weapon — shrank from over a year to weeks.

The period from 2020 to 2026 witnessed the collapse of every buffer between Iran and Israel, culminating in the first direct military exchanges between the two countries in their history.

Soleimani's Assassination (January 2020)

The U.S. assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 removed the architect of Iran's regional proxy strategy. While a U.S. operation, Israeli intelligence reportedly contributed, and the killing accelerated Iran's trajectory toward direct confrontation.

October 7, 2023

Hamas's unprecedented assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 hostages. While Hamas acted with its own agency, Iran and Hezbollah were widely assessed to have provided training, funding, and strategic encouragement. The attack triggered Israel's devastating military campaign in Gaza and set the stage for the broader regional conflagration.

The Pager Attack (September 2024)

In one of the most audacious intelligence operations in history, Israel reportedly compromised Hezbollah's communications network by rigging thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies with explosives. When detonated simultaneously on September 17–18, 2024, the devices killed dozens and wounded thousands across Lebanon, effectively decapitating Hezbollah's command and communications structure.

Operation True Promise I (April 2024)

On April 13, 2024, Iran launched its first-ever direct military attack on Israeli territory: over 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles in a barrage lasting several hours. The attack, dubbed "Operation True Promise," was in retaliation for Israel's strike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus. An unprecedented international coalition — including the U.S., UK, France, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia — helped Israel intercept 99% of the projectiles. Damage was minimal, but the taboo against direct state-on-state warfare had been broken.

Operation True Promise II (October 2024)

Iran's second direct strike, on October 1, 2024, was larger and more sophisticated. Approximately 180 ballistic missiles were launched, with several penetrating Israeli defenses and striking military installations. Israel responded with Operation "Days of Repentance," striking Iranian air defense systems, missile production facilities, and IRGC bases.

The Twelve-Day War (January 2026)

Escalating tensions erupted into the most significant direct military conflict between Iran and Israel. Over twelve days, both nations exchanged strikes on military and strategic targets. Israel struck nuclear-adjacent facilities, while Iran targeted Israeli military bases and infrastructure. International mediation eventually produced a fragile ceasefire.

Operation Epic Fury / Roaring Lion (February 2026)

Operation Epic Fury / Roaring Lion (February 28 – March 2, 2026) was the largest joint US-Israeli military operation in history. Approximately 200 Israeli fighters struck 500+ targets across Iran in two waves, while ~900 US strikes hit Iranian military infrastructure in the first 12 hours. A second wave targeted ~30 ballistic missile and air defense sites in western and central Iran. Supreme Leader Khamenei and Chief of General Staff Bagheri were killed in targeted strikes on Tehran. Iran retaliated with ~300 missiles hitting Israel and 27 US bases across five Gulf states (UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Only Oman was initially spared. By Day 3, the IRGC launched Kheibar hypersonic missiles at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Hezbollah re-entered the war with rocket barrages on Haifa, and Iranian drones struck Qatar's LNG infrastructure, causing QatarEnergy to halt production and a 52% spike in European gas prices.

Iran's most consequential strategic innovation has been the construction of a network of armed proxy organizations stretching from Lebanon to Yemen. Collectively known as the "Axis of Resistance," these groups allow Iran to project military power, threaten Israel from multiple fronts, and maintain strategic depth without committing its own conventional forces.

The combined effect of this network is that Israel faces potential military threats from virtually every direction: Hezbollah from the north, Hamas and PIJ from Gaza and the West Bank, Houthis from the south (via long-range missiles), and Iraqi militias from the east. Managing these simultaneous threats while preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been Israel's central strategic challenge for the past two decades.

Iran's uranium enrichment level is the single most watched metric in the Iran-Israel conflict. The higher the enrichment, the closer Iran is to weapons-grade material (90%+). The chart below tracks the escalation from JCPOA compliance to near-weapons-grade enrichment.

Enrichment Levels Over Time

Key Nuclear Facilities

The Iran-Israel conflict has been shaped by a relatively small number of individuals whose decisions, ideologies, and rivalries have determined the fate of millions.

This article draws on the following academic, institutional, and journalistic sources. Readers are encouraged to consult these works for deeper analysis.