Israel and Iran: Age-old Frenemies
Welcome! I’m Tom Griffin and this is my intelligence history newsletter. Feel free to share this article with the button below.
Israel may have taken the name of Operation Rising Lion from the Book of Numbers, but its conflict with Iran is anything but a reflection of ancient hatreds.1 The Persian Empire gets a pretty positive press in the Hebrew Bible, notably in the Book of Ezra which praises the Achaemenid kings for allowing the Jews to return from Babylonian exile to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem.2
That history has some significant modern resonances. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Israel had a strong relationship with Iran as part of the peripheral doctrine, which sought to cultivate allies on the edge of the Arab world.
One intelligence dimension of this policy was the TRIDENT liaison relationship established in 1958 between Mossad, Turkey’s National Security Service (NSS), and Iran’s SAVAK intelligence service.3
TRIDENT’s existence came to light following the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran during the revolution. A shredded CIA booklet, reconstituted by Iranian students, reported:
The main purpose of the Israeli relationship with Iran was the development of a pro-Israel and anti-Arab policy on the part of Iranian officials. Mossad has engaged in joint operations with Savak over the years since the late 1950s. Mossad aided Savak activities and supported the Kurds in Iraq. The Israelis also regularly transmitted to the Iranians intelligence reports on Egypt’s activities in the Arab countries, trends and developments in Iraq, and Communist activities affecting Iran.4
Even a transformation as profound as the Islamic Revolution did not remove all traces of the past. The Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) retained some institutional continuity with SAVAK, although it also acquired a new rival in the form of the intelligence organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Israel remained attached to the peripheral doctrine in part because Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran threatened to elevate a new Arab regional hegemon.
In perhaps the most notable account of the relationship, Trita Parsi records:
At the height of Iran’s ideological zeal, Israel’s fear of an Iraqi victory, its dismissal of the dangers of Iran’s political ideology, and its efforts to win Iran back and revive the periphery doctrine all paved the way for Israel’s policy of arming Iran and seeking to defuse tensions between Washington and Iran.5
This policy was reflected in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra Affair, when Israel acted as an intermediary in the transfer of US arms to Iran. American officials later claimed that the key Iranian middleman, arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, had led them to believe that he was working with clerical moderates, interested in closer relations with the US. Ghorbanifar insisted that he had been working for a unitary Iranian government.6 This was perhaps a moot point for the Israelis, given their view of the Iraqi threat.
A decade and a half later, similar recriminations would surround the role of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi in promoting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. According to biographer Aram Roston, both the Netanyahu government and Mossad refused to work with Chalabi in the late 1997, despite the blandishments of American neoconservatives.7 Netanyahu did, however, endorse the logic of the Iraq invasion itself, predicting it would have ‘enormous positive reverberations on the region.’8
After the invasion, Chalabi liaised with Ahmed Frouzanda, the leader of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Southern Iraq. When the Iranians learned that that the Americans had broken their codes, Chalabi came under suspicion as the source of the leak, prompting US intelligence agencies to consider whether he had been an Iranian agent all along. Roston stops short of this conclusion, but notes that ‘there is no evidence that he ever told U.S. intelligence anything about his contacts in Iran, while there is significant evidence that he told Iranian intelligence about his dealings with the United States.’9
In the aftermath of the Iraq War, one might have concluded that Iran had the best of these shadowy entanglements. By 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan was warning of a ‘new crescent’ linking Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.10
With Saddam Hussein out of the picture, however, the logic of my enemy’s enemy no longer applied. It was around this time that the Iranian nuclear programme became a central focus for Mossad, under a new chief Meir Dagan.11 His strategy of aggressive covert action, including the assassination of nuclear scientists, was partly driven by fears that a bombing attack would be ineffective.12
It now seems to be Mossad that has benefitted most from vestigial Israeli-Iranian links, with the putatively moderate clerics of the 1980s being replaced by agents willing to take part in significant covert operations. Ironically some of those agents may be linked to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which was backed by Iraq in the 1980s.13
This is not necessarily the kind of opposition that can deliver the regime change that Netanyahu has called for, and even regime change may not guarantee an end to Iranian nuclear enrichment.
A diplomatic settlement still looks to be the best way to achieve that. The alternative is that as in Iraq, and increasingly in Syria, one war sows the seeds of the next.
Aviya Kushner, Why is Israel’s attack on Iran called ‘Rising Lion’ — and what does the Bible have to do with it? Forward, 17 June 2025.
Jeffrey T. Richelson, Foreign Intelligence Organizations, Ballinger, 1988, p.231.
Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation, The Conquest of Middle East, Harper Perennial, 2006, p.156.
Foreign Intelligence and Security Services: Israel, Central Intelligence Agency, March 1979, p.24. Archived at the National Security Archive.
Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US, 2007, 2008 ed., p.104.
Stephen Engelberg, FROM AN IRANIAN MIDDLEMAN, HIS SIDE OF THE STORY, New York Times, 23 June 1987.
Aram Roston, The Man who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, Nation Books, 2008, p.140.
Zack Beauchamp, Benjamin Netanyahu’s not-so-prescient 2002 message to Congress about Iraq, Vox, 26 February 2015.
Aram Roston, The Man who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, Nation Books, 2008, p.140.
Jordan’s Abdullah concerned Iraq may tilt toward Tehran, NBC News, 8 December 2004.
Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Random House, 2018, p.579.
The Spymaster: Meir Dagan on Iran's threat, CBS News, 16 September 2012.
Tom O’Connor, Iran Nuclear Espionage Battle Intensifies with New Leak Claims, Newsweek, 10 June 2025.