Opening image: MTI / EPA / Abir Sultan
The news on Saturday night may have hit the average reader like a bolt from the blue: the Islamic Republic of Iran attacked Israel with 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles. The Jewish state and its allies successfully destroyed 99 percent of the devices. The damage was minimal, and there appeared to be essentially no injuries, with a Bedouin Muslim girl injured in the Negev desert – although Iranian state media typically showed fake footage of the alleged massive destruction. In any case, all authoritative analysts agree that – just like after October 7, 2023 – we have dawned on a new Middle East: the Iranian-Israeli conflict, fought with proxies, has reached the level of an interstate war, and the events are not over yet.
This is no longer a direct conflict between Israel and its proxies, but between two sovereign states.”
According to the pro-Israel narrative, Iran, which was involved at least at the level of funding in the October 7 terrorist attack, has taken another step toward Israel’s obliteration. However, it is worth bearing in mind that a significant part of the Third World and readers informed by Western progressive media are not confronted with this image at all. According to pro-Iranian observers, America and Israel have been putting pressure on the Persians for decades, and now an unprovoked, in principle attack on Iran’s territory – the Damascus embassy that was shot by unknown people on April 1 is considered Iran’s territory – “Israeli strike” reaction received.
From friend to enemy
Apart from the above narrative, it is worth seeing that the weekend attack is the result of a long process. According to the literature, the relationship between Israel and Iran can be divided into several stages. Relations were cool between 1948 and 1953, when the Jewish state was established, and Iran voted against the partition of Palestine and Israel’s membership in the UN. However, from 1953, when, following an American intervention, the ruling Pahlavi dynasty was strengthened against the power of the prime minister, Persian-Jewish cooperation began to flourish.
Anti-Semitism is an integral part of the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in Iran”
At that time, Iran supplied Israel with oil, and the Jewish state supplied the Persians with military technology. Secret services cooperated, the joint Trans-Israel oil pipeline was built in the 1960s, and direct flights flew between Tel Aviv and Tehran. However, the Pahlavi dynasty made serious mistakes: it did not respect Islamic traditions, ignored corruption and poverty, and the notorious National Intelligence and Security Organization (Savak) tortured and imprisoned thousands of opponents, including communists and Islamists. , and murdered hundreds. The collaboration is partly with Israel “periphery doctrine” based on which the hostile Arab neighbors were “one away” can be countered by winning over countries such as Ethiopia, Turkey or even Iran.
On the other hand, the ideology of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution was hostile to Zionism, that is, to the founding idea of the state of Israel. The leader of the revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini, believed that the decline of the Islamic world was due to a conspiracy by Britain and the United States to make Zionism the dominant ideology of the Middle East. The Ayatollah produced a plethora of wildly anti-Semitic speeches, in which he initially attacked Judaism, later Zionism and Israel. Iran’s arguments still include the fact that Jews do live in the country, and that it is represented in parliament as an established religion. However, Iranian Jewish leaders are intimidated, controlled individuals who can only say things that please the regime. You may remember that one of the first tasks of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was to convict and execute Habib Elghani, one of the leaders of the Iranian Jews, on charges of Zionism and treason in a conceptual trial in the spring of 1979.
Contrary to the claims of Iranian propaganda abroad, anti-Semitism is an integral part of the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Khomeini wrote about the Jews as they were “they distort the Koran, hoard money, and are agents of the West”. This kind of anti-Semitism also characterizes the Ayatollah’s followers. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Khomeini’s top disciples, claimed that opposition to the Jewish state “the sacred duty of every Muslim and every person who believes in Allah”.
America immediately announced: it does not want escalation”
Iranian propaganda has repeatedly set the relationship between Israel and America as “the tail wags the dog”or refers to them as “the great devil and the little devil”. Every year, Iran organizes Al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) at home and in the diaspora, on which anti-Semitic and anti-Israel messages are broadcast. Al-Quds Day is a peculiar phenomenon in the sense that, despite its extreme content, it is allowed to be held in most major Western cities (although it was banned in Berlin in 2023). Shiite and Sunni extremists, the woke left, neo-Nazis and anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews appear at the demonstrations. However, the messages are unmistakable: regularly for the abolition of Israel and “with the Zionists” they call for violence against.
However, there is no better proof of the real motives of the Iranian regime than its role in spreading Holocaust denial – on this front it even allies itself with the otherwise often anti-Muslim neo-Nazis – and the threat to the Jewish diaspora. Iran in 2006 “Holocaust caricature contest” arranged, and the country’s leaders made statements denying the Holocaust on numerous occasions. It is also arguable that “only with Israel” they would have a conflict, since according to press reports in February 2023, it is Iranian in Western countries “death squads” it houses sleeper cells tasked with attacking Diaspora Jewish communities should Israel ever go to war with Iran.
Iran’s allies: the proxies
In light of the above, it is perhaps not surprising that Iran, for ideological and pragmatic reasons – “external danger” presenting it, improving its disadvantageous (Shia) position in the Muslim world – it turned from Israel’s ally into Israel’s enemy, and reduced the distance between the two countries – and the stabilization of its regional power – by strengthening proxy forces in the Middle East. Iran, settling on the Palestinian cause, gradually elevated itself to its main representative, not only gaining widespread support in “street muslims” between, but also neck-deep in the support of terrorism around the world. At the beginning of the process, the appearance of Shiite influence still provoked fierce protests on the Palestinian side. Iran is also a supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, whose human rights abuses are well documented.
Perhaps we are not yet at the Third World War”
Among Iran’s allies, the most important are the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement in Gaza and the West Bank, the Party of God (Hezbollah) in Lebanon, the Twenty in Yemen and other groups in Syria and Iraq. Most of the confrontations took place with the former three during the years and decades. The conflict in South Lebanon has been going on since 1985 and has involved several wars and hundreds of Israeli casualties in the conflict with the Lebanese army and Hezbollah. There was already a war in Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and a new chapter has been going on since last year. In the process, not only Hamas and Islamic Jihad attacked Israel – and they are now defending themselves in Gaza – but Israel was also shot by the Houthis and Hezbollah.
The current confrontation is therefore part of a long process, although the Iranians have never gone this far. This is no longer a direct conflict between Israel and its proxies, but between two sovereign states. It is impossible to predict the effects and consequences of the attack, the events are unfolding before us. Perhaps we are not yet at the Third World War, as it is highly questionable whether there is a Russian or Chinese interest in an open involvement with Iran. America and its main European and regional allies – Germany, the United Kingdom and Jordan – took part in repelling the missiles and drones fired by the Iranians and their persistent terrorist organizations, but America immediately announced: it does not want escalation, it does not plan to participate in a counterstrike. We can be certain that both the (supposed) Israeli strike on April 1st and the Iranian missile attack on the 13th rewrote the history of the Middle East conflict.
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History of attacks
This is not the first time that the forces of Israel and Iran have directly or indirectly confronted each other. Since 2013, it is known that the Israeli Air Force has repeatedly bombed Iranian targets or weapons shipments in the Middle East. In January 2013, Israel fired on a Syrian convoy delivering Iranian weapons to Hezbollah. At that time, the Syrian government had not yet reacted to the bombing. In December 2017, according to Arab press reports, the Israelis fired at an Iranian base south of Damascus (the Israel Defense Forces usually does not comment on this kind of news). There was an even more serious case when, according to the Russians and the Syrians, Israel fired at an air base near Palmyra in April 2018, at which time, according to press reports, Iranian soldiers were also killed in the attack. Between January 2017 and September 2018, the Israeli Air Force fired 800 bombs and missiles at Syrian targets and Iranian targets there. In August 2019, however, it took down an Iranian drone that was allegedly preparing to attack Israel.
Perceived or real Israeli attacks have sometimes involved high-ranking Iranian military leaders. In 2015, an unnamed lieutenant general was killed, and in December 2023, Brigadier General Sayed Razi Mousavi was killed in an Israeli strike. In January of this year, high-ranking officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were shot near Damascus, according to press reports, the bombing may have been the work of Israel. The most well-known case, however, was without a doubt the liquidation of Iranian lieutenant general Kászem Sülejmáni by American forces in January 2020. In the killing of Suleimani, who was the commander of the special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Jerusalem Forces, Israel allegedly cooperated by providing intelligence information.
