Is the Cold War Between Israel and Iran Heating Up?
Iranians burn American and Israeli flags and photos in protest of Trump’s controversial decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Though Israel and Iran have engaged in a shadow war for years, the conflict has significantly escalated in recent months. Fighting previously limited to military forces has since invaded the public sphere and affected millions of citizens in both countries. On October 26, 2021, Israel launched a cyber attack on Iran’s fuel system, leading to a nationwide gasoline shortage lasting 12 days while the Iranian government scrambled to mitigate the crisis. The assault occurred notably around the two year anniversary of a highly disruptive fuel crisis in Iran. In consideration of the sensitive timing, geopolitical analysts claim the attack was a means to reignite civil unrest and destabilize the Iranian government.
In early November, Iran responded by breaching the security of Israeli medical facilities. Iran also targeted Atraf, the most-trafficked LGBTQ dating site in Israel, and leaked confidential information such as HIV statuses and explicit photos. Between these two hacks, the information of 1.5 million individuals, which equates to 16% of Israel’s population, was compromised. It remains somewhat unclear whether this was a concerted ideological statement, given that in Iran, one can legally be killed for engaging in homosexual relations. In a controversial 2007 lecture at Columbia University, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “In Iran, firstly, we do not have homosexuals like you have here [in the United States]. In our country, such a thing does not exist.” In contrast, Israel is lauded as the most pro-LBGTQ state in the Middle East, remaining the sole country that acknowledges gay marriage performed abroad. Given Iran and Israel’s vastly divergent ideological stances, Israeli LGBTQ activists suspected that Atraf was strategically targeted to single out and disparage the progressive, Western practice of supporting the LGBTQ community that Israel has come to symbolize. As Israeli cyber security scholar Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski reasoned, “What’s unique about these attacks is that they’re not motivated by commercial interests... they’re more aimed at humiliating the organizations or trying to create as much disruption or inconvenience with the attacked organization by targeting sensitive data.”
One may wonder whether attacks executed by way of computers rather than weapons could really lead to bloodshed. Yet the deeply symbolic nature of the affronts in an already fraught environment suggests that this Iran-Israel cold war may turn hot; the fear invoked is reminiscent of the US-Soviet Cold War. As a New York Times article on November 27, 2021 posited, “No one died in these attacks, but if their goal was to create chaos, anger, and emotional distress on a large scale, [the perpetrators] succeeded wildly.” Furthermore, these “soft” attacks were indeed accompanied by some “hard” ones, including an alleged drone strike by Iran on an Israeli tanker off the coast of Oman in July. Interestingly, neither country has explicitly blamed the other for the cyber breaches, as for either to do so could represent a declaration of war. Additionally, with earlier cyber hacks this past year, another challenge has emerged: to determine with certainty whether the Iranian and Israeli governments actually perpetrated these offensives. Assaults on Iran’s national railroad and Israel’s water system were committed with suspiciously varied levels of complexity, which points to the possibility that other forces—such as rogue terrorist groups—may have instead been culpable.
Given the current state of affairs, the history of Iran and Israel is not what many would expect––for nearly four decades beginning in 1953, the countries engaged in steady, mutually beneficial relations. Through Shah Momhammad Reza Pahlavi's reign, the governments illicitly cooperated along economic, military, and security lines. One explanation for these peaceful relations is that Iran and Israel arguably had greater shared interests in this previous epoch; both states feared Soviet Communism, Nasserite Pan-Arabism, and mutual Arab enemy countries. Moreover, at the time Israel was a staunch follower of the periphery doctrine, which posits that Israel must position itself as a friend of its non-Arab neighbors (like Turkey and Ethiopia) in order to combat its multitude of Arab ones. On the Iranian side, Shah Momhammad Reza Pahlavi had an outsized perception of Israel’s influence on the American government, believing that Israel could help him garner support with the apathetic Kennedy government.
After the Iranian Revolution, the countries maintained tacit positive relations, especially because of shared concern over Baathist Iraq. However, when Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, returned from exile his government immediately broke relations with Israel. To crystallize his nascent Iranian government’s position, the Ayatollah boldly gave the former Israeli Embassy to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. During the same period, tensions between the newly formed Islamic Republic and the larger international community also heightened. By the end of the 1990s, relations between Israel and Iran escalated to the point where they became fully hostile––a tension that would come to define the Middle Eastern political landscape until today. To the now-extremist government of Iran, the United States––or the “Great Satan”––became enemy number one, and Israel was bestowed with the title of the “Little Satan.”
Notably, the two countries do not have any of the typical material causes for conflict, such as shared borders, conflicting wartime allyships, or territorial disputes. However, Iran’s possible nuclear armament has become a major source of tension. Until the end of his regime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spearheaded a full-court press to convince the US to renege on the 2015 nuclear deal. He also urged the US to engage in a joint incursion on Iran’s nuclear plant sites. Furthermore, Israel has been accused of sponsoring a series of covert endeavors to stymie the program’s success. This starkly contrasts with the nature of Israeli-Iranian relations prior, during which the nations collaborated on a weapon with the capacity to carry a nuclear warhead, an endeavor ironically dubbed “Project Flower.”
What does the future hold for this high stakes friend-to-enemies arc, which poses a threat to not only the Middle East but also the broader international community? There are multiple factors to weigh. One consideration is that Trump and Netanyahu––two of the staunchest opponents of the nuclear deal––are now largely out of the picture. Another key aspect is the current leadership of each nation’s government. Ibrahim Irasi, an Iranian hardliner and conservative Islamist, ascended to presidency in August 2021 after Hassan Rouhani’s significantly more moderate and reformist rule. In contrast, the new Israeli president Naftali Bennett is somewhat more moderate on foreign policy than Bibi Netanyahu. When Bibi attempted to organize an Israeli incursion against Iran, he struggled to reach consensus from both the defense establishment and his own security cabinet. Bennett, on the other hand, is actually well-poised politically to mount an offense and in fact faces domestic pressure to do so.
The majority of these factors point in the direction of augmented strife. As shown by recent events, millions of Iranian and Israeli citizens are embroiled in the middle of a cold war they have no say in. As Amos Harel wrote in the Israeli Newspaper Haaretz in November, “History never repeats itself exactly, but Israel’s Iran dilemma is far from over.”