The Ideology That Needs an Enemy: Iran, Israel, and the Road to a New Middle East

In the long and often tragic story of the Middle East, few enmities appear as illogical as the one between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel. Israel has never taken an inch of Iranian land. The two countries share no border. They have no historic territorial dispute. Before 1979, they were close allies — Iran was the second Muslim-majority country after Turkey to recognize Israel, and the two nations cooperated extensively on trade, oil, agriculture, and military matters.¹

Yet today, "Death to Israel" is not just a chant — it is official state policy. Why?

A Hatred Born of Ideology, Not Geography

The answer lies not in geography or past grievances, but in revolutionary ideology. When Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979, he needed a permanent external enemy to bind the revolution together. Israel became the perfect symbol: a successful, non-Muslim, Western-aligned state thriving in the heart of what the new regime claimed as the Muslim world. It was labeled the "Little Satan," a cancerous tumor to be removed. This was never about Palestinian land or contested borders. It was about the regime's very identity — and its survival.

That hatred has proven remarkably useful. By arming proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen — Iran projected power across the region without direct confrontation, positioning itself as the champion of the "oppressed" while distracting its own citizens from economic failure and domestic repression.² 

Anyone who normalized relations with Israel — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and potentially Saudi Arabia — instantly became an enemy too. Friendship with Israel was treated as betrayal of the revolution.

This is not normal statecraft. Most nations argue over resources, borders, or influence. Iran ran on perpetual ideological conflict. The regime needed enemies the way a fire needs oxygen. Without them, the revolutionary narrative would collapse, exposing decades of mismanagement and lost opportunity for the Iranian people.

The Nuclear Question: Why It Was Never Just About Deterrence

Central to understanding this dynamic is Iran's long-running nuclear program — a project the regime always claimed was civilian in nature, but which Western intelligence agencies and the IAEA consistently assessed as having weapons-related ambitions. By late 2024, Iran's enriched uranium stockpile was assessed as sufficient for more than a dozen nuclear weapons if further refined, and it had installed centrifuges well in excess of what the 2015 JCPOA permitted.³

For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran would represent not just a strategic threat but a potential existential one — the regime that had made "Death to Israel" its rallying cry openly acquiring the means to act on it. That calculation drove Israel's unilateral strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities in June 2025, and then the far larger joint U.S.-Israeli campaign — Operation Epic Fury — launched on February 28, 2026.⁴

The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other senior officials, severely damaged Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure, and triggered retaliatory attacks across the region, including Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20% of global oil trade passes — causing significant economic disruption.⁵ The conflict lasted nearly six weeks before a conditional ceasefire was announced on April 7, 2026, brokered in part by Pakistan.⁶

The Proxy Network: Weakened but Not Gone

Before the 2025–2026 campaigns, Iran's network of proxies served as its primary instrument of regional pressure. But by the time the ceasefire was reached, that network had been dramatically degraded. Hezbollah suffered catastrophic leadership losses during the 2024–2025 period, including the killing of its secretary-general, and was further weakened by the Lebanon ceasefire. Hamas, while still capable of violence, lost the majority of its military leadership in Gaza. The Houthis, despite sustained missile campaigns, failed to achieve strategic objectives and faced intensified counterpressure from a coalition of regional and Western powers.⁷

This is the context in which Trump's post-war diplomacy must be understood. Iran's axis of resistance — the architecture of proxies and destabilization built over four decades — is at its lowest operational capacity in a generation.

Trump's Vision: Connecting a Deal to Normalization

In the midst of this transformed landscape, President Donald Trump has pushed a bold diplomatic vision. In calls with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain, Trump urged them to expand the Abraham Accords as part of any lasting settlement with Iran.⁸ He stated on Truth Social that joining the Accords should be "mandatory" for six Muslim nations, adding: "It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be."⁹

The Abraham Accords, first brokered during Trump's first term in 2020, have delivered tangible results for participating nations. Israel-UAE bilateral trade has reached approximately $3.2 billion, joint military and intelligence cooperation has deepened, and the participating states weathered the Gaza war and Iran conflict without abandoning the framework.¹⁰ The accords represent a pragmatic bet that economic interdependence and shared security interests — particularly regarding Iran — can outlast regional turbulence.

The key remaining piece is Saudi Arabia. Riyadh still demands a credible, time-bound path to Palestinian statehood as a condition for normalization — a position Israel's current government refuses.¹¹ That gap is real, and bridging it will require concessions from all sides. But the fact that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait actively participated in military action against Iran during the 2026 conflict reflects how profoundly the regional calculus has shifted. The ideological cover that Iran long relied upon — portraying itself as the protector of Arab and Muslim interests — has been stripped away by its own aggression.

The Subject of Iran and the Intellectual Double Standard

Many observers in the West, often with the best of intentions, continue to repeat elements of Iran's own propaganda. They frame Israel as the perpetual aggressor and Iran's hostility as an understandable reaction to "occupation" or Western meddling. A recent piece in Foreign Policy went so far as to argue that the Abraham Accords "laid the groundwork for a new era of violence" — citing, remarkably, Yahya Sinwar's own stated rationale for the October 7, 2023, massacre as geopolitical evidence that normalization was counterproductive.¹²

Sinwar — a man who orchestrated the largest mass murder of Jewish people since the Holocaust

This reasoning deserves direct examination. Sinwar — a man who orchestrated the largest mass murder of Jewish people since the Holocaust — said he attacked Israel partly to derail Saudi-Israeli normalization. And the argument being made, earnestly and in respectable publications, is that this tells us something important about the accords rather than about Sinwar. It is an extraordinary logical inversion: assigning moral responsibility for an act of terrorism to the diplomatic process the terrorist sought to destroy.

Such framing skips the uncomfortable truth: Iran's hatred of Israel predates every current conflict. It would persist even if every territorial dispute were resolved tomorrow. As Iranian dissident voices and polling data consistently show, the enmity is a feature of the regime, not a response to Israeli behavior.¹³ The ordinary Iranians who have repeatedly taken to the streets — risking their lives after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, and again during the brutal crackdown that followed the 2025 protests — understand this better than many Western commentators do.

What Peace Actually Requires

True peace in the Middle East will not come from indulging revolutionary fantasies or from diplomacy that begins by accepting the regime's framing of the conflict. It will come when pragmatic nations choose prosperity over perpetual war — as the Abraham Accords nations have already demonstrated — and when the international community calls Iranian ideology what it actually is: a survival tactic dressed up as principle.

The regime in Tehran did not hate Israel for what it has done. It hated Israel for what it is — a living refutation of the revolution's core promise that the Muslim world must reject the Western order. That ideological function explains why no territorial concession, no ceasefire, and no diplomatic gesture has ever moderated the regime's posture toward Israel.

With Khamenei gone, the nuclear infrastructure severely damaged, and the proxy network at its weakest point in decades, there is a genuine, if narrow, window. Seizing it requires clarity — about what the regime was, about what the accords have accomplished, and about the kind of intellectual honesty that the moment demands.

The biggest victims of the old order, as always, were ordinary Iranians who deserved far better than a government addicted to conflict. The question now is whether the world will help build something different — or whether familiar, comfortable narratives will get in the way.

Notes and References:

Footnotes

1. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "When Iran and Israel Were Friendly: Photos From Before the Revolution." RFERL, 2021. https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-israel-friendly-relations-pre-revolution-photos/33459819.html ↩

2. For an overview of Iran's proxy network and strategic logic, see Kenneth Pollack, Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy (Simon & Schuster, 2013); and the Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Iran's Axis of Resistance. https://www.cfr.org/article/what-are-irans-nuclear-and-missile-capabilities ↩

3. Congressional Research Service. "Iran and Nuclear Weapons Production." CRS Report IF12106, Updated April 9, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12106/IF12106.21.pdf ↩

4. Britannica. "2026 Iran War." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/2026-Iran-war ↩

5. UK House of Commons Library. "US-Iran Ceasefire and Nuclear Talks in 2026." Research Briefing CBP-10637, May 2026. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10637/ ↩

6. Britannica. "Iran Nuclear Deal Negotiations (2025–26)." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-nuclear-deal-negotiations ↩

7. Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The Abraham Accords at Five Years: Resilience and Roadblocks." 2025. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/abraham-accords-five-years-resilience-and-roadblocks ↩

8. Barak Ravid. "Trump asked Muslim leaders to normalize with Israel if Iran deal is reached." Axios, May 24, 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/24/trump-iran-war-israel-muslim-countries-abraham-accords ↩

9. Times of Israel. "Trump links Abraham Accords to Iran deal, says joining should be 'mandatory' for 6 Muslim nations." May 25, 2026. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-links-abraham-accords-to-iran-deal-says-joining-should-be-mandatory-for-6-muslim-nations-tells-saudis-and-qataris-to-go-first/ ↩

10. Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The Abraham Accords at Five Years: Resilience and Roadblocks." 2025. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/abraham-accords-five-years-resilience-and-roadblocks ↩

11. Axios. "Trump asked Muslim leaders to normalize with Israel if Iran deal is reached." May 24, 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/24/trump-iran-war-israel-muslim-countries-abraham-accords ↩

12. Foreign Policy. "How the Abraham Accords Fueled a New Era of Conflict." May 7, 2026. https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/07/trump-iran-israel-saudi-arabia-uae-abraham-accords-conflict-palestine/ ↩

13. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Two Wars Later, Iran's Nuclear Question Is Still on the Table." May 2026. https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/05/iran-nuclear-program-progress-deal ↩