To the casual viewer of news broadcasts, the relationship between Iran and Israel appears to be one of existential ideological confrontation, defined only by hostility and enmity. Daily headlines are filled with mutual threats, rockets falling on the Golan Heights, loud diplomatic escalations, and Tehran’s declarations that “Tel Aviv will be wiped off the map,” countered by Israel’s constant warnings of the “Iranian nuclear threat” endangering the very existence of the Jewish state.
But those who look beyond the smoke of the media realize that the truth is far more complex and cunning than this manufactured image. The shouting in front of cameras does not necessarily reflect what happens in backroom negotiations or in the secret deals that shape power balances in the region.
In 2007, Iranian-American researcher Trita Parsi published his renowned book Treacherous Alliance, revealing the complex network of secret interests that, for decades, connected Tehran and Tel Aviv under Washington’s watchful eye. Drawing from over 130 interviews with decision-makers in the three capitals, along with unpublished documents and official archives, Parsi paints a shocking picture of the hidden relationships between two parties that publicly claim absolute enmity.
Parsi traces these relations back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Iran was deeply embroiled in a bloody conflict with Saddam Hussein’s regime. At that time, Israel — described in Tehran as “the lesser Satan” — was supplying Iran’s army with weapons and ammunition in direct coordination with Washington. In fact, 80% of the arms Iran used in that war came via Tel Aviv, in what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
Not only that, but documents reveal that Iran offered Israel use of its military airbases in Tabriz in the early 1980s to launch strikes on Iraq’s nuclear reactor — in case Israel decided to hit the Iraqi project. This deal clearly shows that the apparent hostility was often merely a bargaining chip in complex negotiations between actors well aware of their interests.
International politics is not always about friends and enemies. Rather, it revolves around the calculus of interests and power balances. Iran and Israel — despite all the media theatrics — share a common obsession: dominance over the vast Sunni Arab region, which has historically been the cultural and political heart of the Middle East.
Both see themselves as minority entities surrounded by a wide Arab world. Both regard the Sunni Arab center as a civilizational rival that must be weakened and fragmented by any means. Hence, their strategies align in fueling sectarian wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon. Iran fans chaos through its ideological militias, while Israel benefits from the collapse of major Arab armies that once posed a real threat to its expansionist project.
As for the occasional military skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israel, and later with Hamas — a group the Mossad had a significant hand in creating, and which has been funded by Qatar and Iran through Israeli banks — these are not existential wars, as many imagine. They are rather harsh bargaining messages used whenever political communication channels break down. There has been no truly uncontrollable military explosion on these fronts in decades. Fire flares up when needed and is quickly extinguished once new understandings are reached — often under American sponsorship.
At a deeper intellectual level, both parties — in their own ways — perceive the rise of Islamic Arab civilization in the 7th century as a strategic upheaval that toppled the Persian and Roman empires and caused a historical disruption still unforgiven in both Zionist and Safavid consciousness. Both now seek — through modern means — to redraw the region’s map to ease their historical anxieties: dismantling states, dividing peoples, exhausting societies with economic blockades and sectarian wars, and distracting Arab populations with battles over bread and electricity — far from any real civilizational renaissance.
What we see today — the repeated media escalations between Iran, Israel, and the U.S. — is no exception to this long-standing pattern. Exchanged rockets, fiery statements, and cyber wars may appear to be open confrontation, but in reality, it’s a carefully managed conflict run according to rules well known to both sides.
In each round of these “clashes,” we find strange signs of implicit coordination among the three parties: advance warning of strikes through back channels, carefully selected symbolic targets that avoid heavy human losses, and sometimes — almost surrealistically — unannounced thank-you messages exchanged after the strike quietly concludes!
The performance repeats — but with more blatant crudeness each time. And the cruder it gets, the more it relies on media amplification that sells the public a picture of raging conflict, while behind the cameras, the strings of interest remain tightly held by the grand puppeteer: Washington.
History tells us of this recurring pattern — a philosophy once mastered by British intelligence, which famously created the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 to fill the void left by the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Though presented as anti-Western, most of the Brotherhood’s leaders were educated in the U.S., which supported their rise to power in Egypt — were it not for the cultural resilience of the Egyptian people. From their legacy emerged groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, and leaders of countless coups across the Islamic world.
The current regional conflict, as I see it, has a public face for the masses and a hidden reality behind the scenes. All parties are bound by puppet strings, with new characters added, others erased, and scripts written — all to monopolize power and wealth and to perpetuate religious and ideological conflict.
Let us not forget that, gradually, all of this serves the goals of global Zionism — deeply embedded in the political fabric of the U.S. and the U.K., commanding immense military power and possessing advanced technological capabilities that are now used without shame or justification.
The next article: What Should We Do?
