The international effort
to limit Iran's nuclear research has no more
ardent a supporter than Israel. Iran, according to
some analysts in and out of Israel, is seeking to
build nuclear weapons and is almost certain to use
them on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, making
pre-emptive attacks on Iran essential to national
survival. The US and European Union (EU) are more
skeptical regarding Iran's intentions - as are
even many Israeli experts.
Only Saudi
Arabia and a few other Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) states share Israel's alarm and hence
support immediate, punishing attacks on Iran.
Saudi Arabia is said to have offered overflight
rights for Israeli strike aircraft and also help
with refueling for their return flights. Strange
bedfellows in the affairs of the world. But how
enduring will this partnership be? Do the two
powers have different
endgames in mind? A look at Israeli foreign policy
toward Iran over the past 50 years suggests
different long-term objectives may be in mind. In
short, Saudi Arabia almost certainly wants Iran
gravely weakened. Israel does not.
The
rise and fall of Iranian-Israeli
partnership Lost in the almost two decades
of enmity between Iran and Israel is appreciation
that they were allies for many years. Their
partnership was based on a shared concern over the
power and ambitions of Arab states. The latter
opposed the creation of Israel and fought it
several times over the years.
Iran under
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi opposed those same Arab
states. Arab-Persian animosities from distant
conquests commingled with geopolitical rivalry,
border disputes, and dislike for mercurial
populist dictators and Wahhabi zealots. An
enduring community of interest with Israel
developed and remained a steadfast part of
regional geopolitics for 40 years. The shah sold
oil to Israel and in return received military
equipment and intelligence.
The fall of
the shah in 1979 changed many things in the
region, but not the Iranian-Israeli partnership.
Geopolitical interests continued to triumph over
religious differences. Israel proved valuable to
Iran during the long war with Iraq - a war brought
on by a mercurial populist dictator backed by
Wahhabi zealots. Israel continued to sell and
service equipment. It was a lesson in realpolitik.
Relations deteriorated in the 1990s as a
new strategic situation emerged when the Iraqi
military was badly mauled in the first Gulf War
(1991). Saddam Hussein's army, already weakened
from eight years of war with Iran, took very heavy
casualties and his armor was devastated. Saddam,
for reasons of his own, ferried off most of his
fighter aircraft to his erstwhile enemy, Iran -
presumably to keep them safe. Iran has kept them
safe ever since.
Iran became relatively
more powerful in the region. There was no check on
the revolutionary Shi'ite power, and its influence
was growing in Lebanon and Syria along Israel's
northern and eastern boundaries. With Egypt signed
off on a peace agreement and Iraq's military in
ruins, Iran became Israel's primary strategic
concern. The soundness of this astonishing change
in perspective may be debated for quite some time
but its importance for ongoing events is clear.
Years of partnership ended and a period of growing
tension began. [1]
Israel looks
ahead Today, international sanctions are
stifling the Iranian economy and punishing air
strikes loom, though not as ominously as a few
months ago. Saudi Arabia will press for decisive
military action including extensive air campaigns
on nuclear research targets and key industrial
centers as well. It will also seek an effort to
fragment Iran by encouraging insurrections in
Kurdish, Arab and Baloch regions. This would leave
Tehran a gravely weakened country, and Riyadh the
undisputed master of the Gulf. [2]
Dealing
a devastating blow to Iran from the air and
fragmenting its territorial integrity will have
considerable appeal among Israeli strategic
thinkers. It would be a tremendous security boon
for the country and for its long-standing Kurdish
allies in Iran, Iraq and Syria. However, adverse
implications will readily appear to strategic
thinkers looking further ahead than just the next
few years. The firm knowledge that wars lead to
unforeseen events and that the Arab world is
entering a new, unpredictable period will give
Israel much to ponder.
The rise of Saudi
power in the region could one day lead to the
coalescence of Sunni states under Riyadh's
political and financial leadership. Saudi Arabia
and other GCC states are military nullities of
course, but they can use their financial assets to
garner support in the region, especially from
Egypt, Syria, and Sunni parts of western Iraq.
Those countries all have significant military
traditions; they all need foreign aid; and they
all dislike Israel.
Better, then, to
concentrate on halting Iran's nuclear program and
even detaching Iran from Syria, but not on gravely
weakening and fragmenting the country. Today's
nemesis can be tomorrow's ally, as even a look
into just the past 25 years will reveal. Iran was
once an ally against Arab states and may be one
again, if only out of the turbulent dynamics of
regional geopolitics that have been made all the
more changing by recent wars and uprisings.
The US and the EU seek, at least in the
long term (and probably the very long term), to
help bring democracy to Iran. From the perspective
of Israel, however, a democratic Iran, while
desirable in principle, would not necessarily be
non-nuclear or friendly. The key to
Israeli-Iranian comity was based on geopolitical
interests, not the goodwill of a shah or ayatollah
or president.
1. See Trita Parsi's
masterful Treacherous Alliance: The Secret
Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United
States (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008). 2. See The
Saudi endgame for Iran (It isn't everyone
else's), Asia Times Online, June 22, 2012.
Brian M Downing is a
political/military analyst and author of The
Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in
America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can
be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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