With the region's only nuclear weapons arsenal (Farr), a formidable conventional military force, and a strong backing from the US, Israel entered the 1980s as the Middle East's leading regional power. Having signed a peace treaty with its main Arab rival Egypt, Israel now viewed Saddam Hussein's Iraq as the most salient regional threat facing it. Desperate to hinder Iraq's military and political ascension, Israel was finally granted that opportunity when Saddam invaded Iran in September of 1980.
Iraq - the Greater Threat to Israel
The Iran-Iraq War, which started as skirmishes along the disputed Shat-al-Arab boundary between Iraq and Iran, soon evolved into a major conflict for the dominance over the Persian Gulf (Godsell). Israel’s desire for the war outcome was well articulated by David Kimche, the head of Israeli Foreign Ministry at the time of the conflict, who stated that the Jewish state's hope "...was that the two sides would weaken each other to such an extent that neither of them would be a threat to us" (Parsi, 112).
However, throughout the 1980s Iraq imposed a greater threat to Israel than did Iran. By the 1980s Iraq, an Arab state well known for its rigid stance and past aggression towards Israel, was nearing nuclear potential (Dowell). Iraq’s proximity to Israel along with its ambitions of reviving the Pan-Arabic movement gave the Jewish state a firm reason to oppose Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
In light of these geopolitical realities, Israel lent its support to the post-revolutionary Iran. Even though the country's new Islamic leadership was known for its vehement anti-Israeli stance, Iran was not seen as a viable threat by the Israelis due to the Islamic Republic's precarious political situation and greater distance from the Jewish state. As Tel Aviv University professor David Menashri put it, "Throughout the 1980s, no one in Israel said anything about an Iranian threat - the word wasn' t even uttered" (Parsi, 105).
Exacerbating Israel’s anxieties about Iraq was America’s implicit backing of the Arab state. The US wanted Iraq to replace Iran as the stabilizing force in the oil rich Persian Gulf (Dowell). In the previous three decades that role belonged to Iran, which under the leadership of the autocratic US ally Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was the stalwart of America's interests and policies in the gulf. His replacement by a regime hostile to the US prompted the latter to completely reshuffle its policy towards the region,
The Iran-US hostage crisis produced in the US a perception of Iran as a dangerously impulsive and zealous state that could not be trusted or reasoned with. Thus, despite Saddam's brutal rule and his connections to the Soviet Union, the US regarded him as a more reliable (and perhaps predictable) regional actor than the Islamic leadership in Iran. This increased Iran's isolation and bolstered Iraq's regional standing, reinforcing Israel's belief that it needed to support Iran in order to prevent Iraq from assuming supremacy in the Persian Gulf and the Arab world.
Reviving the Periphery Doctrine
Driving the Israeli leadership to support Iran was also its strong belief in the periphery doctrine, which emphasized close ties with the region's non-Arab states. Such alliances, Israel believed, were vital for diffusing the threats from its Arab neighbors. Iran under the Shah played that role and despite his replacement by an anti-Israeli Islamic regime, Israel still viewed Iran as its natural ally against the Arabs.
Israel's most notable intervention during the war came in June 1981, when fourteen Israeli jet fighters took out Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor which was suspected of developing materials for nuclear warheads (Parsi, 107). The operation was a success, setting back Iraq's nuclear program by several years and allowing Iran to focus on repelling Iraqi forces out of its territory.
Several major arms deals were struck between Iran and Israel, especially in the early years of the war. According to the Jaffe Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University, Iran purchased $500 million worth in arms from Israel between 1980 and 1983 (Parsi 107). All in all, Israel provided Iran with 80% of its arms in the early years of the war.
Derailing the Arab-Iranian Rapprochement
While preventing Iraq from winning supremacy in the Persian Gulf was the main reason behind Israel's decision to back Iran, it wasn't the only one. One of Iran's primary regional goals was bridging the Shi'a Persian-Sunni Arab divide by improving relations with its Arab neighbors which in the long run would allow the Islamic state to assume leadership in the Middle East (Parsi, 88). By adopting a deeply hostile stance towards Israel, Iran sought to tap into the strong anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world, stemming from Arabs' rejection of the Jewish state and their defeat at its hands during the 1948 and 1967 wars.
Preventing the bettering of ties between Iran and its Arab neighbors was paramount for Israel. A thaw in Iran-Arab relations threatened to further isolate Israel and increase the regional opposition against it. To help prevent such developments, Israel jumped at every opportunity to publicize its clandestine relationship with Iran during the war. The main targets of Israeli machinations were the Gulf Arab states to which Iran was trying to reach out. By publicizing its secret dealings with Iran, Israel sought to undermine the Islamic state's image among the Arabs based on the idea that they would reject Iran for its double-dealings with the Jewish state.
Israel's reasoning was that if shunned by the Arab world, Iran would be compelled to reform its Pahlavi era alliance with the Jewish state, strengthening both states vis-a-vis their Arab rivals. Thus Israel's policies during the Iran-Iraq war were driven by two seemingly contradicting factors: strengthening Iran military in order to neutralize Iraq, while weakening the Islamic state politically by undermining its rapprochement with rest of the Arab states.
Israel hoped that its policies would generate circumstances where a victorious, but isolated and vulnerable Iran would realize that the Persian-Arab divide is insurmountable, and that the region's Arab states will always constitute a threat to it. And the most effective way to stifle this threat was through cooperation with Israel, a state that has repeatedly shown that it's fully capable of neutralizing the Arabs.
Sources
- Dowell, W. (1980, July 31). Iraqi-French Nuclear Deal Worries Israel. The Christian Science Monitor, p. 10.
- Farr, W. (1999, September) The Third Temple's Holy of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons. The Counterproliferation Papers: Future Warfare Series No. 2.
- Godsell, G. (1980, April 15). Behind Iran-Iraq clash: Battle to control Gulf. The Christian Science Monitor, p. 1
- Parsi, T. (2007). Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the US. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Enver Guseynov - I majored in International Affairs with emphasis on Middle East and have written several research papers and articles on the region.
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