Netanyahu and Khamenei: Intimate Enemies

By Mansour Farhang

The recent cyber attacks between Iran and Israel threaten to escalate their forty-year old war of words into a direct military encounter that neither side wants. At the present time, only an initiative by the United States has the potential to reduce the dangerous tension between Tehran and Tel Aviv. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/world/middleeast/israel-iran-cyberattacks.html. 

In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, condemned Israel as an “enemy of Islam” and he was so adamantly opposed to the 1979 Israeli–Egyptian peace treaty that he named a street in Tehran after Khalid Al- Islambouli, the assassin of President Sadat. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expresses his views on Israel in two different ways depending on his audience and purpose at hand.  On certain occasions, he says “we should conduct a referendum among the true Palestinians, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian, who have lived on this land, inside or outside the occupied territories, for at least 80 years.” In other times, he simply calls Israel “a cancerous tumor in West Asia” that must be uprooted.” He has repeated both versions ad homonym. Prime Minister Netanyahu ignores the first version but never misses an opportunity to respond to the second one by saying:  “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.”  

Iran and Israel have no conflict of interests and normal trade relations between them could benefit them both. Many Iranians, like many Americans, Europeans and Israelis, are critical of Israeli rightwing politicians for refusing to recognize Palestinian national rights and the two-state solution. But the sociopathic attitude of anti Semitism or questioning the legitimacy of the Israeli state reveals the prejudice of Iran’s ruling clerics. 

 What is important to focus on at this time is that the hostile words of Khamenei and Netanyahu against each other serve the power and/or ideological objectives of both sides. Iran’s rhetorical denunciation of Israel is intended to portray the Islamic Republic as the revolutionary state challenging the status quo in the region. It is also intended to titillate the resentment of Arab Street toward their own rulers. Since most Palestinians have come to believe that their plight is no longer a primary concern of Arab Governments, Iran wants to present itself as the champion of their cause. The illusion of this tactic is to transform the Israeli/Palestinian conflict into a confrontation between Zionism and Islam.  Netanyahu uses the presumed Iranian threat to marginalize international concern for the plight of Palestinians and cultivate common cause with Saudi Arabia and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf against Iran.

The Islamic revolution was originally inspiring to Arab publics in general and  political dissidents in particular. This early promising image gradually suffered set back when the theocratic regime turned out to be more cruel and corrupt than the one it had replaced. Reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International over the past forty years document the fact that the Islamic Republic has been a world leading violator of human rights since its inception. However, the loss of Iran’s revolutionary appeal was followed by the rise of its political influence in the region after the fall of Saddam Hussein. This was, ironically, a gift of the Bush administration to Iran’s theocrats. Today, Iran has close ties with Shi’a militias in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. These non-state actors have their own objectives and at times function as IRGC’s proxies. They receive economic and military assistance from Iran and compete or challenge their national governments. In the Syrian civil war, Iran played a significant role in saving Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Now that the forces against al-Assad are largely defeated, Iran’s strategic goal in the country is faced with active Israeli opposition backed by Russian passivity. 

Russia and Iran cooperated in the Syrian civil war in order to protect the rule of Bashar al- Assad. This alliance was tactical, not strategic. Iran expected the survival of Bashar al- Assad to provide it with the opportunity to establish a military base in Syria close to Israel border and achieve a more efficient contact with Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. Russia, on the other hand,  wanted to advance its influence in the region without sending ground forces to Syria. Thus Putin decided to limit Russia’s involvement in the war to bombing anti al-Assad fighters and the residential areas under their control. He preferred to leave ground combat to IRGC and its proxy Shi’a militias. He also expected Iran to provide indispensible economic and military aid to Assad but opposed to Iran’s strategic plan in Syria because it values its relations with Israel. 

Given Iran’s substantial economic and military assistance to Syria, marginalization of its position in the country is humiliating for the ruling theocrats both at home and in the region. Iran’s rulers deny this disgrace but reality is catching up with them. Mr. Heshmatollah Falahat Pishe, chair of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee 2016-2020, recently complained about Iran’s Syria policy  by saying “we have given Syria $30 billion. What happens to this money? We must be paid back.”

Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has also discredited its pro Palestinian propaganda in the region. As Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Fellow at Carnage Endowment for International Peace, writes, ”in ostensibly trying to avenge the injustice done to Palestine, Tehran has helped al-Assad perpetrate a far greater one. The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 is more than six times greater than the approximately 90,000 Arabs (roughly 20-30 percent of them Palestinian) killed in the 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while more than twice as many Syrians (12 million) as Palestinians have been displaced.” 

https://www.hoover.org/research/evolution-arab-popular-opinion-toward-iran-and-iranian-self-perceptions

Since 2017, Israel has been bombing Iran’s military forces in Syria and Moscow virtually ignores Iran’s expectation that it should favor Iran’s military presence in Syria. Following the latest Israeli airstrike targeting Iran’s military forces in Syria, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennet said Israeli military “was working to drive Tehran out of the country.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-reports-israeli-airstrikes-in-syrian-held-golan-heights/.  While Tehran has repeatedly launched missiles into Syria and Iraq and has been accused of attacking Western-allied oil tankers, it has never launched a missile into Israeli territory. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-01/iran-fires-missiles-at-militants-in-syria-over-parade-attack/10325396.  Israel has never bombed Iran on its territory either.  Iran lacks the capacity to challenge Israel’s sophisticated military. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing allies find it in their political interest to portray Iran as a serious threat. There are Israeli security experts and area specialists who believe Netanyahu exaggerates the threat, but they have little impact on public opinion. Given the tragic history of anti Semitism, it is understandable that Iran’s threatening rhetoric against Israel intensifies the security concerns of Israeli voters. 

It is virtually certain that the Iran-Russian rivalry in Syria will compel Iran to give up its strategic design in the country because al-Assad considers Russia as a more helpful supporter of his survival and he does not want  to remain helpless in the face of the Israeli bombing of his country. https://www.mei.edu/publications/can-russian-iranian-alignment-syria- last.  

When a Middle Eastern national leader advocates regional unity, he means others should come under his umbrella. Political cultures of Islamic countries are diverse and do not offer respite to such ambitious calls. Iran’s dream of promoting revolutionary Islam under its leadership is bound to face the kind of disillusionment that Gamal Abdol Nasser of Egypt,Hafez al-Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein of Iraq faced at the end of their rule

The surreal nature of the enmity between Khamenei and Netanyahu is that they use identical tactics in pursuit of their different strategic goals. They both opposed the Oslo Accord, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Jordanian – Israeli peace treaty and the two- states solution. In short, they reject the idea of a negotiated settlement of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. Khamenei condemns Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, as deviant and Netanyahu never misses an opportunity to discredit him. Khamenei used to praise Yasser Arafat as a hero until he shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin. From that day on the hero became a villain. Netanyahu virtually accused Rabin of treason for meeting with Arafat. It is not accidental that Khamenei and Netanyahu keep quoting each other in defense of their positions. It is also worth noting that they were the only heads of states in the Middle East that supported the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. After the disintegration of Iraq, they came to have a common interest in defeating the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). The organization threatened Iran’s interest in Iraq and Syria and could become  a potential challenge to the country’s eastern and western borders. Likewise, the rise of ISIS in the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, and Syria had persuaded the government of Israel to prefer the survival of al-Assad regime in the civil war. Once the defeat of ISIS came to be a matter of time, the war of words between Tehran and Tel Aviv intensified. Netanyahu focused on Iran as Israel’s dangerous enemy as well as a threat to regional stability. The verbiage of Tehran’s  Ayatollahs  could not be more generous in providing him with ammunition. 

If there is going to be an armed conflict between Iran and Israel, it is likely to begin with cyber operations, which are asymmetrical and hard to determine their origin. Iran’s capacity to engage in cyber warfare does not match that of Israel, but it is possible that IRGC can launch cyber attacks against sensitive Israeli targets. If this happens, a direct war between Iran and Israel could follow, a war that will become regional and inevitably involve the United States.  Such a war will not have a winner and its main victims, in both human and material terms, will be the Iranian people. It will  devastate Iran’s pro democracy dissidents and make the regime more repressive than ever. Thus rationality suggests that de-escalation of the  confrontation between Iran and Israel should be the goal of major players in the region. At present, direct talk between Tehran and Tel Aviv is not a possibility, but indirect and confidential mediation has a chance for reduction of tension between them. What makes such mediation hopeful is that unprecedented economic problems, growing resentment of the public toward the regime, unaffordable continuation of assistance to its proxies and the horror of the coronavirus pandemic have combined to create potential flexibility among Iran’s ruling clerics for a diplomatic way out of the multifaceted crises they face. 

An illustration of how Iran’s clerical rulers justify their acts in private while denying it in public is the purchase of arms from Israel during the Iran-Iraq war.  In January 1980, when Iran’s defense minister, Colonel Taghi Fakouri, learned that Israel was the source of the weapons and spare parts Iranian agents were buying in black market, he personally reported the information to Khomeini in order to protect himself against possible accusations of dealing with the “Zionist devil.” Khomeini responded by asking if the salesmen were Israelis. “No,” Fakouri told him, “they are British and Italians.” In that case, the Ayatollah asserted, “we are not religiously obligated to ask them where they get the merchandise.” Iran’s rulers legitimately criticized world powers for failing to condemn Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical bombs against Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war, but they simply echoed Bashar al-Assad’s denial of using chemical bombs in numerous residential areas of Syria.

What Iran’s ruling clerics need in order to engage in diplomatic negotiations is an incentive that would help them justify their flexibility to their base at home and to their proxies in the region. However surreal it might sound, the only person  who could give such incentive to  Ayatollah Khamenei is President Donald Trump. What he has to do is to order temporary suspension of economic sanctions against Iran and announce Washington’s readiness to join the meetings of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to discuss how the U. S. wants to improve the nuclear deal. Such meetings can provide an opportunity for confidential discussion of how the confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv can be de-escalated. Iran’s ruling clerics will never admit that they have engaged in such negotiation, but their behavior over the past forty years shows that they can be pragmatic if it can help them to deal with the challenges they face.  

Mansour Farhang, a retired professor of international relations at Bennington College, was revolutionary Iran’s first ambassador to the United Nations but left Iran as a dissident in 1981.