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Iranian Hostility toward Israel Is Not Inevitable

(Brookings Institution) Natan Sachs - Iranian-Israeli hostility is actually quite odd. Tehran is well over a thousand miles from Jerusalem. The two countries have no major bilateral claims toward one another. Whereas large Arab neighbors of Iran, like Iraq or Saudi Arabia, might be considered its natural competitors, Israel cannot. What historical memory there is of Persian-Judaic interactions is largely positive in Jewish eyes: Streets in Israel are named for Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return to Judea from their Babylonian exile in 538 BCE. The hostility between the two states can be traced directly to one period, 40 years ago: the Iranian revolution and the birth of the Islamic Republic. Before 1979, Israel had ambassadors in Tehran and robust trade in oil. The revolution upended these relations dramatically as Israel was relegated by Ayatollah Khomeini to the status of "Little Satan" (the "Great Satan" being the U.S.). A street in Tehran was named for the assassin of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who first signed peace with Israel. Israel is a useful enemy for the Islamic Republic. It is not merely a diversion from domestic woes, but it is also part of an Iranian attempt to play in Middle Eastern affairs. For a large, Muslim-majority, non-Arab state committed to exporting its revolution to Arab countries, it is essential that the main fault lines in regional affairs not be national - Arab-Persian - but rather religious: Muslim-non-Muslim. The writer is director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.
2019-01-25 00:00:00
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