Since the launch of Israel’s Operation Rising Lion on June 13^th, the Middle East has been on the brink. Israeli fighter jets striking deep into the Iranian territory attacked nuclear facilities, missile strikes and the senior leadership. Drawing the first blood, Israel set Iran into a tizzy by systematically eliminating the senior ranks of military leaders and nuclear scientists.

Since the October 7^th Hamas terror attack, Israel has clinically neutralised Iranian proxies and reduced its sway. Through a string of assassinations, including Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah, Israel brought Hamas and Hezbollah to their knees. Iran’s Islamic regime wields great influence in Lebanon, Syria and has a destabilising effect on Yemen and Iraq. Hezbollah’s losses and the fall of the Assad regime diminished Iran’s power and influence in the region and significantly weakened Iran’s axis of resistance.

Israel and Iran have been strategic collaborators and friends before the radical Islamic ideology engulfed and roiled the relations. Iran transitioned to an Islamic regime with the takeover by the Ayatollahs in 1979. The Iranian revolution ushered the country into an Islamic ambit. Israel’s relations with Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty were friendly. Iran was among the second major-Muslim country after Turkey to recognise the Jewish State following its founding in 1948. Iran, along with India and Yugoslavia, was part of the special UN committee formed to formulate a future course for Palestine and voted against the UN’s partition plan for Palestine.

Iran saw Israel as a key partner to counter the rising Arab nationalism and to maintain positive relations with the West. The ties took a brief hit under Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1951, who wanted to nationalise the oil and expel the British.  Following his ouster and the installation of the Shah in 1953, the ties blossomed, and countries exchanged ambassadors.

As a part of the strategic ‘Periphery Doctrine’,  Israel forged alliances with non-Arab states to counter hostile neighbours. In 1958, Israel, Turkey and Iran formed the “Alliance of Periphery” and solidified the “Trident” pact- an agreement encompassing intelligence sharing, economic cooperation and arms trade. Indeed, Mossad and the Iranian intelligence agency SAVAK collaborated closely, and Israel provided extensive technical support to help develop Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure.

During the crippling Arab boycott and oil embargo, Iran emerged a major oil supplier to Israel helping Israel to circumvent the crisis. In return, Israel provided technological and agricultural assistance. Both countries jointly constructed a pipeline and supplied oil to Europe. Israel supported Iran’s covert efforts to assist the Kurdish separatists in Iraq.

The 1979 overthrow of the Shah marked Iran’s transformation into an Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The new clerical regime redefined Iran’s national identity around religiously driven anti-Zionism, severing decades of covert cooperation with Israel. In response, Israel shut down its embassy in Tehran, which was soon replaced by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) mission. This dramatic realignment also prompted an exodus of many Iranian Jews, who fled the country amid rising hostility and uncertainty.

Denouncing the US as “the Big Satan” and Israel as “Little Satan”, the clerical regime championed the Palestinian issue. The jihadi roadmap for the Islamic regime can be traced to the Khomeini’s “The Little Green Book” akin to the Mao Zedong’s “The Little Red Book”.

Transforming the Palestinian cause into an Islamic cause, Khomeini declared every last Friday of Ramadan as Quds Day (Jerusalem is called al-Quds in Arabic), and held rallies across Iran in support of Palestine to brandish Iran’s Islamic credentials. The larger idea was to put the Arab countries allied to the US on the defensive. But through the 1980s, Israel considered Saddam Hussein of Iraq a greater threat than Khomeini’s Iran. Israel supplied military equipment to Iran during the long wars with Iraq and served as a conduit for US weapons to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair.

As per CIA reports, contrary to American assessment, Israel believed Iran could be an important partner in promoting its interests in the region and eventually hoped that it could play a role in facilitating rapprochement between the US and Iran. Ironically, Khamenini portrayed Israel as a ‘usurper Zionist regime’; a tool of American imperialism.

At the First Islamic Conference on December 4^th, 1990, Khamenei expounded the goal of liberating Palestine, “Regarding, the Palestine issue, the problem is taking back Palestine, which means disappearance of Israel. There is no difference between the occupied territories before and after [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967. Every inch of Palestinian land is an inch of Palestinians’ home. Any entity ruling Palestine is illegitimate unless it is Islamic and by Palestinians. Our position is what our late Imam (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) said, “Israel must disappear”. The Jews of Palestine can live there if they accept the Islamic government there. We are not against Jews. The issue is the illegal ownership of Muslims’ homes”¹.

Reiterating support for a new Palestine government, Khamenini in August 1991, said, “Solving the Palestinian problem entails destroying and eliminating the illegitimate government there, so that the true owners [of the land] can form a new government; Muslims, Christians, and Jews can live side by side. . . Our view regarding the Palestine issue is clear. We believe the solution is destroying the Israeli regime. Forty years have passed [since establishment of the state of Israel], and if another forty years passes, Israel must disappear, and will”².

Around the same time, Iran nurtured Hezbollah in Lebanon, which bombed a Jewish community centre and the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992. Khamenini began backing the Islamist jihadi groups like Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihadi groups stating, “The United States cannot solve the Palestinian problem to its own liking. The issue is like a bone choking them and, God willing, with Israel’s disappearance will be solved”². This pathological hatred reached a crescendo with the election of a hardliner, President Ahmadinejad, in 2005, who hosted the Holocaust Denial Conference in Tehran. This irrevocably damaged Iran-Israel relations.

In 1990s, Israel-Iran secret collaboration ended after Israel got a whiff of Iran’s nuclear pursuits. Iran’s nuclear program, which began under the Pahlavi dynasty, hit a pause during the Iranian revolution. But it secretly continued to pursue the program under the codename AMAD project. After the first reports of a nuclear enrichment centre surfaced in 2003, facing the prospect of censure, Iran agreed to sign the Tehran Agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend enrichment.

However, huge inconsistencies uncovered by the IAEA led to the imposition of sanctions by the UNSC in 2006. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Agreement between P (5+1) and Iran in 2015 provided limited relief after Iran agreed to cap enrichment at 3.7%.

While publicly asserting its nuclear plan served civilian use, appearing to uphold commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Additional  Protocols, Iran covertly pursued enrichment activities. In 2018, a covert Mossad operation uncovered blueprints detailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, revealing undisclosed weapons-related facilities. Contending that the checks under the JCPOA as inadequate, then President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA.

From 2006, the covert hostilities escalated significantly as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Forces (IRGC) provided substantial backing to Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel. In response, Israel intensified cyber warfare against the Iranian nuclear programme. By early  2010s, amid the Arab Spring upheaval, Iran consolidated its ‘Axis of Resistance’ to strangulate Israel. The threat from the Ayatollah regime is real and undeniable, and the October 7 attacks have reinforced the same.

The IAEA reports from 2022 have consistently reported a steady increase in the Iranian stockpile of enriched Uranium. The latest IAEA report of May 2025 notes an expanded production of 60% enriched Uranium of 408 kg below the weapons-grade. This quantity places Iran perilously close to the nuclear threshold, raising international concerns should the trend continue unchecked.

On June 12, 2025, the IAEA board found Iran non-compliant with nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years³, and the board voted to censure Iran. In response, Iran announced it would activate a third nuclear enrichment facility⁴. Hours later, Israel launched strikes on Iran. Considering Israel’s record of taking down Iraq’s Osirak in 1981 and Syria’s putative nuclear facility in the Deir ez-Zor region in 2007, the air strikes on Iran aren’t unprecedented but just a continuation of a pattern.

(Contd..)

Part 2: https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/double-standards-or-realpolitik-us-playbook-on-nuclear-brinkmanship-part-2