The sworn enemies had enjoyed a clandestine relationship in the past in pursuit of their interest, recalls Rana Nejad
Given the ferocity of the ongoing Israel-Iran war, and the hyperbolic declarations of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, any talk of a rapprochement would seem farfetched. But the Iranian-American scholar Rana Nejad recalls that the two sworn enemies had enjoyed a clandestine relationship in the past for years in pursuit of transient interests.
On the face of it, the positions of the two are irreconcilable. While Netanyahu’s aim is to bring about a regime change in Tehran, Ayatollah Khamenei seeks nothing less than the elimination of Israel.
“It would like to see the people of Iran rise up,” Netanyahu said in a TV address. Driving his point home, the Israeli PM recalled that “Israel’s actions against Iran’s ally Hezbollah had led to a new government in Lebanon. Israel’s actions had led to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria.”
“The Iranian people also have an opportunity to bring about a change. I believe that the day of your liberation is near. And when that happens, the great friendship between our two ancient peoples will flourish once again.”
On his part, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei envisaged a doom’s day scenario for Israel. “The Zionist regime has sealed for itself a bitter and painful destiny,” he said.
In its operation codenamed “Operation Rising Lion”, launched on Friday, Israel said that it struck Iran’s main nuclear enrichment site in Natanz. Negating the claim, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said that radiation levels outside the facility “remain unchanged”. There are sceptics within the Israeli Establishment too. There’s no way of destroying a nuclear programme by military means, opined Israel’s National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi. But the military campaign could create conditions for a deal with the United States that would thwart the nuclear programme, Hanegbi told an Israeli TV channel.
Aim to Wreck Iran-US Talks in Oman
There is strong suspicion that Israel started the military operation on Friday mainly to wreck US-Iran talks on nuclear enrichment to be held on 15 June in Oman. Others say that Israel may have the tacit support of the US, which is keen on mounting pressure on Iran to come to the table and stop the nuclear enrichment programme.
“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump said on Truth Social on Friday.
Netanyahu told the German Chancellor and the French president that Israel attacked Iran to prevent it from building nuclear weapons, claiming that the Islamic Republic was only “months” away from acquiring that capability.
To Netanyahu’s advantage, the IAEA had reprimanded Iran for not adhering to its non-proliferation obligations, accusing Tehran of failing to provide credible explanations for the presence of uranium traces at undeclared sites in the country.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had said that abandoning uranium enrichment was “100%” against the country’s interests, rejecting a central US demand in talks to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The US proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Oman, which has mediated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
However, neutral observers maintain that there is no evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons programme as all Iranian nuclear facilities and material are under international safeguards. In fact, Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, testified in March this year that “the intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”
Regime Change is Israel’s Recipe
The real aim of the US and Israel appears to be to bring about a regime change in Iran by degrading its economy and making the Khamenei regime more unpopular than it is. Netanyahu himself has let the cat out of the bag on this matter. Once a friendly regime takes over, the US and Israel can enter into deals with it, as it happened in Syria recently.
Love-Hate Relationship
Rana Nejad, a Washington-based Iranian expert on the Middle East, wrote in the News Line Magazine (www.newlinesmag.com) on 29 January 2025, that Iran and Israel had not been adversaries all the time. They had cooperated clandestinely when it suited their interest.
After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution which brought the radical Ayatollah Khomeini to power, Israel and Iran began a secret relationship for their mutual strategic benefit. They continued to trade with each other that totalled millions of dollars per year.
The Khomeini regime, for all its public zealotry, was deeply pragmatic. The primary goal in those early years of the revolution was survival in a hostile world headed by the US, which had been close to the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime. Communist USSR was also hostile to the Islamic revolution.
When Iraq (with a majority Sunni population) invaded Iran (with a majority Shia population) in 1980, Tehran turned to Israel for assistance, though the Ayatollah had dubbed Israel as the “Little Satan” (the US being the “Big Satan”).
Iran badly needed weapons and trained military personnel to fill the yawning gap created by purges and desertions. Israel helped fill the vacuum by selling more than $100 million worth of arms to Iran in 1983. By 1985, Danish cargo ships chartered by the Israeli government and private arms dealers made over 600 trips carrying American-made arms through the Persian Gulf to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, Rana Nejad recalls.
Israel trained the officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard even as Iran’s government continued to publicly berate Israel as a “cancerous tumour.”
The Iraq-Iran war lasted eight years, leaving Iran devastated. To rise from economic ruin, Iran continued secret dealings with Israel. And Israel cooperated. The thinking in Israel at the time was that the Iranian revolution would be short-lived, and a modern, right-wing Reza Shah Pahlavi type of regime would take over.
In 1982, Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel would continue selling weapons to Iran despite US opposition. Iran denied any such dealings, but to Israel this did not matter as the secret business with Iran was going great guns. Again, in 1987, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Defence Minister, said that “Iran is Israel’s best friend.”
End of Clandestine Relationship
But the dynamics shifted after 1988, when Iran and Iraq accepted an internationally brokered ceasefire, Nejad says. Having survived eight brutal years of conflict, Iran no longer felt compelled to compromise its revolutionary ideology, she points out.
“The regime’s focus turned to exporting its revolutionary zeal, particularly to Shiite populations in Syria and Lebanon — especially Hezbollah, which soon became a threat to Israeli security. The once pragmatic relationship between Iran and Israel disintegrated, giving way to a more aggressive stance rooted in Iran’s reinvigorated anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiment.”
Even in the midst of all the high-decibel rhetoric, Iran continued to accept military supplies from Israel, rejecting a similar proposal from the Soviet Union, Nejad points out. For Khomeini, the US and USSR were bigger Satans than Israel.
As a matter of fact, covert relations across ideological barriers had become the order of the day in the Middle East. Israel cultivated covert relationships with Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan for sharing intelligence. Israel’s military technology, including cyber weapons, was shared.
Actions vs Rhetoric
Rana Nejad says that it is time analysts and policymakers learnt to prioritise states’ actions over their rhetoric.
“This will reveal a new world of possibilities when it comes to dealing with (seemingly) diplomatically inaccessible States. A modern-day example would be cooperation between the U.S. and Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency coordination against the Islamic State group. Low-level security cooperation between Iran and other States threatened by the Islamic State bolstered an interim coalition driven by common security objectives, showing that cooperation can be achieved even in the most unlikely circumstances.”
Given their past dealings, an Israel-Iran understanding could emerge from the current brutal war, particularly because President Trump has pledged his reputation on a nuclear deal with Iran.