The real enemy in the Middle East isn’t Israel. It’s Iran.
While the world fixates on Israel, it is Iran’s terror networks, proxy wars, and nuclear ambitions that pose the greatest threat to regional stability.
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As my friend and longtime Israeli security official Avi Melamed likes to say: Most people believe that, to understand the Middle East, you need to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But in reality, it’s the other way around: To understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you must first understand the Middle East.
A Brief History of Iran and Israel
Historically, Iran (known as Persia until 1935) had little direct conflict with the Jewish People or the land that would become the modern State of Israel. In fact, ancient Persia under Cyrus the Great is remembered for allowing the Jews to return to their homeland from Babylonian captivity around 538 BCE.
Fast-forward to 1947, when the United Nations formed the Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), composed of 11 member states. After considerable deliberation, the committee proposed a partition plan, supported by eight of the 11. When the plan was brought to a vote at the UN General Assembly, Iran was among the countries that voted against it, arguing that peace could only be achieved through a single federal state and warning that partition would lead to future violence.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi predicted the partition would spark generations of fighting. Still, under his reign, Iran maintained diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, recognizing its strategic importance in a region dominated by Arab powers.
Following the modern State of Israel’s establishment in 1948, the two countries grew remarkably close. Iran became the second Muslim-majority country (after Turkey) to recognize the Jewish state. Israel viewed Iran as a key non-Arab ally on the edge of the Arab world, aligning with the concept of a “periphery alliance” championed by the State of Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Before formal diplomatic relations were established in the late 1970s, Israel maintained a permanent delegation in Tehran that operated as a de facto embassy.
After the Six-Day War fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) in 1967, Iran supplied a significant share of Israel’s oil, with crude transported to Europe via the joint Israeli-Iranian Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline. Trade flourished, with Israeli engineers and construction companies active in Iran.
EL AL, Israel’s national airline, ran direct flights between Tel Aviv and Tehran. Military cooperation, while mostly secret, was believed to be extensive; one example being the joint Project Flower from 1977 to 1979, a missile development initiative.
But everything changed in 1979. The Islamic Revolution ousted the Shah, replacing him with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s theocratic regime, which adopted an openly hostile stance toward Israel — one that has endured ever since.
Iran’s hostility toward Israel is rooted in the very ideology of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini and his successors have consistently framed Israel as an illegitimate, usurping entity occupying Muslim lands, particularly Jerusalem, whose religious significance in Islam has often been exaggerated for political ends, despite the Temple Mount being “just another mosque” in relative Islamic hierarchy.
Khomeini’s doctrine emphasized resistance to “global arrogance,” primarily embodied by the U.S. and Israel. The regime cast Israel as a Western imperialist outpost undermining Muslim sovereignty. This narrative became central to the revolutionary ethos, with the liberation of Jerusalem and the support of the Palestinian cause portrayed as religious and ideological imperatives.
One must ask whether, like many political leaders throughout history, Khomeini fabricated an external enemy to unify a fractured society and legitimize his regime’s radical mission, an increasingly unpopular mission among ordinary Iranians.
Sectarian dynamics play a role too. While Israel is primarily concerned with its Arab Sunni neighbors, Iran (a Shiite-majority state) uses its anti-Israel stance to win legitimacy across the Sunni Muslim world, presenting itself as a unifying force against a common foe.
Geopolitical Strategy
From a strategic perspective, Iran views Israel as a key obstacle to its ambition of regional hegemony. Tehran seeks to expand its influence through an alliance network known as the “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, the now-fallen Assad regime in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Territories.
Conversely, Israel sees Iran as its most dangerous regional adversary, due to both its support for terrorist groups and its entrenched military presence across Israel’s borders. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have further inflamed tensions, with Israel fearing that a nuclear-armed Iran would embolden its proxies, tip the regional balance of power, and provoke widespread conflict.
Moreover, Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric serves a domestic purpose: rallying the population and distracting from the country’s internal crises. During times of political unrest or economic hardship, Tehran turns to the “Zionist enemy” to unite its factions and redirect public frustration.
This rivalry is also shaped by international alignments. The U.S. has long been Israel’s chief ally, offering military, diplomatic, and economic support that has solidified Israel’s security and regional influence.
Iran, in response, has sought to deepen its ties with Russia and China, relationships that provide critical economic investments, military technologies, and geopolitical backing. Russia’s intervention in Syria, for instance, has helped solidify Iran’s regional position and extend its influence close to Israel’s northern borders.
American-led sanctions and pressure over Iran’s nuclear program have only increased Tehran’s hostility toward Israel, which it sees as the architect of Washington’s hardline stance.
Energy Politics and Financial Motives
Iran’s motivations aren’t just ideological; they’re financial. Alongside Qatar, Iran owns the South Pars/North Dome natural gas field, the largest in the world. Discovered in 1990 by Iran’s state-run National Iranian Oil Company (the second-largest oil company in the world after Saudi Aramco), the South Pars field is a strategic prize.
More than a decade ago, Qatar sought to build a pipeline to Europe via Syria, but Syria’s then-president, Bashar al-Assad, declined, possibly under pressure from Russia, prompting Qatar to fund anti-Assad rebels, helping spark the Syrian Civil War. In response, Iran proposed its own $10-billion pipeline to Europe through Iraq and Syria, with Assad’s approval in 2012 and likely Russian support. This plan, unlike Qatar’s, aligned with Moscow’s interests and influence.
Meanwhile, the idea of new energy corridors through Israel gained traction as part of the burgeoning Saudi-Israeli normalization process. The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor would have created a new route for energy and trade through Saudi Arabia and Israel to Europe.
Then came Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7th. Viewed in a broader context, it may have been more than terrorism; it could have been a geopolitical ploy to sabotage Saudi-Israeli normalization and kill the corridor. Iran, Qatar, and Russia (Hamas’ benefactors) have little interest in seeing Saudi Arabia grow richer and more powerful without them.
This is partly why Iran supports Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Not only because they share ideological goals, but because their chaos serves Tehran’s economic and strategic objectives, hampering Israel from advancing the interests of its regional rivals.
The Palestinian Factor
Iran has positioned itself as the champion of the Palestinian cause, funding Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while casting itself as the defender of Muslim dignity against Israeli “aggression.” This posture helps Iran build credibility in the Sunni Arab world and portray Arab states normalizing ties with Israel as traitors to the Palestinian struggle.
But this façade is cracking. Last year, the Palestinian Authority (operated by the Palestinian political faction Fatah) publicly condemned Iran’s meddling in internal Palestinian affairs, stating:
“This external interference, particularly by Iran, has no other objective than to sow chaos in the Palestinian internal arena. … We will not allow our sacred cause and the blood of our people to be exploited for suspicious plots that have nothing to do with them.”
Some speculate that Iran is attempting to topple Fatah in the West Bank, replacing it with Hamas, just as Hamas did in Gaza in 2007, violently ousting Fatah from the territory, even throwing political opponents off rooftops. Despite their shared hatred of Israel, Fatah and Hamas remain bitter rivals. That common enemy is the only thing holding back a full-scale Palestinian civil war.
As Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder, once explained:
“There is no ‘Palestinians.’ There are tribes — the tribe of Hamas, the tribe of Islamic Jihad, the tribe of Khalil, the tribe of Nablus — and each one has different interests. And all of them are conflicted. If they did not have Israel as the common enemy, they would kill each other.”
The Broader Cold War: Iran versus Saudi Arabia
Just as Hamas and Fatah are held together by a shared enemy, so too are Israel and Saudi Arabia, both threatened by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been locked in a cold war fought across the region: in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, and among the Kurds. The contest is geopolitical, economic, sectarian, and personal.
Iran claims leadership of the Shiite world. Saudi Arabia claims guardianship of Sunni Islam and its holiest cities. And beneath it all simmers a historical Arab-Persian rivalry. Though King Khalid of Saudi Arabia initially welcomed Iran’s revolution in 1979, the two nations quickly drifted apart. Iran’s theocracy challenged the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy and its claim to religious authority.
On November 11, 2023, Iran’s then-president Ebrahim Ebrahim Raisi visited Saudi Arabia for the first time in over a decade, attending an Arab-Islamic summit convened in response to the war in Gaza. Yet unity proved elusive. Iran reportedly pushed for a resolution calling for severed diplomatic ties with Israel, denied airspace, and oil embargo threats. Saudi Arabia reportedly blocked the proposal.
Later, a Houthi missile aimed at Israel was intercepted — by Saudi Arabia. And last year, at the World Economic Forum, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan declared that regional peace “includes peace for Israel,” and that the Kingdom “certainly” would recognize Israel as part of a larger deal.
Before October 7th, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly signaled progress toward normalization. Leaked outlines of a deal involving defense, energy, and nuclear cooperation painted a picture of an emerging alliance. The Palestinian cause barely featured, an afterthought in a grander vision.
Since October 7th, however, the rhetoric has shifted: No normalization, says Riyadh, without Palestinian statehood. Prince Faisal explained: “We need stability, and only stability will come through resolving the Palestinian issue.”
Read between the lines: Stability means removing the Palestinian file from Iran’s grip. So long as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad serve Iran’s interests, peace between Israel and the Arab world remains fragile. A two-state solution is impossible so long as Iran’s terror proxies remain armed, emboldened, and entrenched.
Tightening of the Noose
Look at a map of Iran’s regional presence: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and even the West Bank. Israel and Saudi Arabia are surrounded. Prior to October 7th this presence was a noose, and Iran held the rope.
Amid growing regional skirmishes between Iran’s proxies and their adversaries, the regime is desperate not to appear weak, especially not in the eyes of Israel, the United States, the Arab world, or its own restive population.
But Israel’s surprise, preemptive strike in the early hours of June 13 confirmed what many in Israel already suspected: Iran is a paper tiger. Despite all its bluster, Tehran was caught off guard. Its layered defenses didn’t hold. Its proxies were mute. And its vaunted deterrence, decades in the making, evaporated in minutes.
Since then, the Iranian regime has found itself increasingly boxed in. The myth of its regional invincibility has been shattered. Its allies, especially Hezbollah and the Houthis, are on high alert but showing signs of hesitation. Hamas, already severely weakened, has become more of a liability than an asset.
Then came another blow: The U.S. Army targeted Iran’s most sensitive nuclear facilities over the weekend. That shift in posture has left Tehran with few good options. Serious military retaliation (not the miniscule, ineffective kind we saw on Monday) risks further exposing its vulnerabilities. Doing nothing threatens to collapse the illusion of strength it uses to maintain control at home and inspire fear abroad.
Worse still, Iran is losing its ability to manipulate the narrative. While it continues to boast of missile strikes and “resistance victories,” the truth on the ground tells a different story: Israel and its allies (both explicit and implicit) are winning by a long shot.
The events of the last 10 days speak louder than Tehran’s decades-long threats. For all its slogans, its missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its theatrics, the Islamic Republic now faces a truth it can no longer outrun: The mask has slipped, the myth is broken, and the noose is no longer around Israel’s neck. It’s around Iran’s.
Is it just boring when I keep saying how much I love Joshua Hoffman?
The ayatollah really has no clothes.