From covert partners to open enemies: The forgotten Israel-Iran alliance

“My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a weird saying, and often it’s extremely wrong. But historically, it’s a principle that has worked sometimes. And it has backfired spectacularly other times.

Supporting an enemy’s enemy to weaken the enemy is a strategy we’ve seen in numerous wars throughout history, both bigger and smaller. A shared enemy turns two countries into allies, temporary friends, sometimes quite reluctantly. And once they successfully defeat their common enemy, they sometimes eye one another suspiciously, and start fighting one another. We can see instances of this in the Napoleonic wars, in the 30-year war, in the Punic wars, and even in wars in the Bible.

The most global and well-known case of this is probably how the allied powers of World War 2 turned against one another in what became the Cold War. Once their common enemy, Hitler, was out of the picture, they turned against one another. When Hitler attacked Soviet in operation Barbarossa in 1941, Churchill immediately turned into Stalin’s ally. When criticized for it, he famously said, “If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

Churchill had a choice there – the US was not an official part of the war yet (they were just lend-leasing), and if Churchill had picked the other side, and allied himself with Hitler against Stalin, Hitler would have welcomed it. But as much as Churchill disliked communism, he still saw Soviet as the lesser of two evils. Not only did he ally himself with Stalin, he even sent them weapons. And so, when the US were dragged into the war by Pearl Harbor a few months later, they found themselves allied with Stalin as well – and they also sent American weapons to Communist Soviet.

But as we all know, once that enemy was defeated, the former allies became enemies. The Cold War had begun.

Other times, the opposite occurs. France and Britain fought 100-year wars against one another, but somehow they found themselves allied together against Germany in both world wars – and they’ve stayed close allies ever since. So the principle of my enemy’s enemy has a history of both success and backfire.

Has it happened in the Middle East? Oh, yes, many times. How could it not? We have Sunnis against Shias, Kurds against Turks, ISIS against Assad, Hamas against PLO, civil war in Lebanon. In many of these cases, Israel and the US could stand aside and stay neutral. Other times, they had to pick a side and ally themselves with the lesser of two evils. I don’t even have to tell you about how most Americans feel about the current Syrian president, Ahmed “Julani” al-Sharaa. He toppled Assad, so he is an ally as the enemy’s enemy. But he has also actively fought against the US in Iraq and been allied with al-Qaeda.

Today, we have a big war ongoing that we always knew was coming against the Islamic Republic of Iran. For decades they have been a huge looming threat building nukes, ballistic missiles, and a circle of proxies around us, preparing to wipe us off the map. So it’s really weird that Iran was once Israel’s reluctant ally. The enemy of the enemy. No, I’m not talking about Iran before the 1979 revolution – I’m talking about the actual Islamic Republic of Iran. The same regime Israel is fighting now. Yes, believe it or not, during the 80s, Israel supplied weapons to the ayatollahs of Iran, because Iran was Israel’s enemy’s enemy.

And that enemy was Saddam Hussein.

Let’s take it from the beginning. In 1947, Iran was one of the 13 countries that voted against the partition plan. However, once Israel came into being, Iran recognized Israel as the second Muslim country to do so, after Turkey. Because both Iran and Turkey were ruled by secular western-aligned rulers.

The Iranian king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), was pro-west and brought industrialization and modernization to Iran as well as women’s rights. But on the other hand he was also extremely autocratic and imprisoned his opposition. He was quite anti-Semitic as well, but took it to the opposite extreme. He believed the Jews ruled the world, so it was important to be their friend. Iran didn’t officially recognize Israel on the UN level due to pressure from Arab states, but there were mutual de-facto ambassadors in Teheran and Tel-Aviv, regular flights of El-Al to Teheran, mutual tourism, Israeli businessmen living and working in Iran, and Iranian oil assisting the Israeli economy. There was also military and intelligence cooperation.

When the 1979 revolution erupted, Iran severed all relations with Israel. Israel managed to evacuate its diplomatic personnel from Teheran in time, so they weren’t held hostage like the Americans diplomats were. Nevertheless, the Iran-Israel relationship ceased existing.

Or did it? Once Saddam Hussein went to war against Iran, Israel attempted to assist Iran, as they felt Iran was the lesser of two evils in this war. Why were they less dangerous? Maybe because unlike Saddam, they didn’t try to develop nuclear weapons…

In 1980, Saddam Hussein launched a war against Iran, which had just fallen to extremist Shiite rule. As a secular Sunni leader ruling a Shiite-majority country, he feared Iran’s push to dominate the Shiite world. He claimed to fight for pan-Arabism and insisted that Iran’s oil-rich, Arab-majority province of Khuzestan rightfully belonged to Iraq — the fact that it was oil-rich was purely coincidental, of course. This became the Iran-Iraq war that went on until 1988, for almost eight years, and it was the biggest war the Islamic Republic of Iran had ever faced – until 2025, that is.

Iran was in trouble at this point, because due to the king’s close cooperation with the US and Britain, Iran’s entire existing military arsenal was based on western equipment. But now they weren’t able to buy anything from the western powers. Maybe because they were under embargo while they were holding American diplomats hostage.

So they secretly reached out to Israel. And what’s even more surprising – Israel said yes. Tank parts, tires for jet planes, and other spare parts for American military equipment were secretly shipped to Iran – while American diplomats were still held in Teheran. When the US found out they forced Israel to stop – until the hostages came home in 1981. Then the US gave Israel permission to keep going low-key and secretly. No one wanted Saddam Hussein to dominate the world oil industry.

But even then, the US imposed restriction on what Israel could sell – which Israel ignored. In return, Israel secretly received Iranian oil, money, but most importantly, made sure Saddam Hussein didn’t succeed in his aspirations. Some estimations say that over 50% of Iran’s weapons came from Israel at this time – and without it, they would have fallen to Saddam’s forces. Israel was fighting the PLO in Lebanon at the same time, and often, PLO weaponry that the IDF seized in Beirut, found its way to Teheran.

In the mid-80s, the “Iran-contra affair” was exposed as a big scandal, which was a messy secret deal between US officials, probably Israeli involvement, Hezbollah, Iran, and Nicaragua, where the US tried in spite of the embargo to sell sophisticated American weapons to Iran to convince them to become more western-oriented, and force Hezbollah to release American hostages.

But the biggest story here was probably the nuclear factor. Can you imagine a Saddam Hussein with nukes? It’s almost as bad as ayatollahs with nukes. Maybe even worse. But the US didn’t want to intervene. The program started already in 1975, and in 1980 as the war started, there was a functioning reactor in Osirak, Iraq. Iran bombed it at the start of the war, but only damaged secondary buildings. So they shared intelligence with Israel, and in June 1981, the Israeli air force blew up Saddam’s nuclear dreams, in spite of the US’s protests. Saddam never became nuclear.

So why did Israel do this? As we said, Iran was the enemy’s enemy. Saddam Hussein was at the time far more dangerous. Second of all, it gave Israel back some of the influence in Iran they had lost in 1979. They were hoping that maybe this would open the door for more moderate forces inside Iran to work with Israel. Third of all, the Jews of Iran who wished to move to Israel could do so without fear as long as this was ongoing – and Israel wanted to preserve that.

Simply stated, throughout the 80s, Iran was not seen as a threat – Iraq and the Soviet Union were. Yes, Iran was publicly calling for Israel’s destruction since 1979, but even so – behind everyone’s back they were cooperating with Israel throughout the 80s. Because both agreed that Iraq could not have nukes.

But then the war ended in 1988, and then the year 1991 came along. Iraq and Soviet both ceased being threats. And Iran was still there. Still called for Israel’s destruction. And, maybe borrowing a page from Saddam Hussein’s playbook, started looking into the option of getting nukes.

Israel and Iran’s “world war 2” against the Hitler of the Middle East was over. The cold war had started. A cold war fought through armed proxies. Until it became a full-scale hot war in 2025.