What exactly is the matter at hand regarding Iran and Israel?

 What exactly is the matter at hand regarding Iran and Israel?

Iran poses an existential threat to Israel. Iran continues to accuse Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, while Israel has condemned Iran of having genocidal aims. Israel has therefore attempted to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons by imposing sanctions and taking military action against it.

Iran and Israel are engaged in an ongoing proxy war, sometimes referred to as the Iran-Israel Cold War or the Iran-Israel proxy war. Iran has backed Lebanese Shia groups, particularly Hezbollah, in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. Iran has supported Palestinian organizations like Hamas in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has carried out airstrikes on Iranian allies in Syria, aided Iranian rebels including the The population's Mujahedin of Iran, and killed Iranian nuclear experts. Israeli forces launched a direct assault on Iranian forces in Syrians in 2018.

Seeing Arab nations as a shared threat, Imperial Iran and Israel maintained a tight relationship, driven by the peripheral concept. Iran severed links with the Islamic revolution in 1979, although during the Iran–Iraq War that followed, secret ties persisted.

support for Shia militias during the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, as well as the invasion of Lebanon. Iranian Islamists had already provided material assistance to the Palestinians prior to 1979. Iran then made an effort to establish ties with the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine, then with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah engaged in combat. In and around the Gaza Strip, Israel and the Palestinians have fought multiple wars: in 2008–2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, and since 2023. The bloodiest conflicts in the Arab-Israeli conflict have been the wars in Gaza and Lebanon in 1982.

The Iran-Israel conflict has been attributed to a number of factors. Due to shared concerns, Iran and Israel had historically maintained a close relationship; but, by the 1990s, the USSR had disintegrated and Iraq had become weaker.

Context

The sympathies of Iranian Islamists with the Palestinians are not new. Mahmoud Taleghani, the Iranian ayatollah, was moved by the suffering of Palestinian refugees during his 1949 visit to the West Bank. In the 1950s and 1960s, Taleqani then started speaking up for Palestinians inside Iran. He began collecting money (such as the zakat) within Iran to send to Palestinians following the 1967 Six-Day War. According to SAVAK archives, the Iranian government beginning at the time was concerned about these actions and thought that the Iranian populace had sympathy for the Palestinians. Similarly, prior to his appointment as Iran's highest official in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini supported the Palestinian people. Considering Israel to be an ally of the Pahlavi government, he also denounced the Pahlavi dynasty's relations with Israel.

Israel supported Iran throughout the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, despite the hostility between the two nations. Israel was one of Iran's primary suppliers of military hardware and instructors during the conflict. In Operation Babylon, Israel assaulted and disabled Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, directly aiding Iran's war effort. One of the main elements of Iraq's development of nuclear arms was thought to be the nuclear reactor.
After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO) left the country. Israeli friends in France and the normal Israeli population profited momentarily from the subsequent Israeli occupation from Southern Lebanon, as Hezbollah launched fewer physical assaults on Northern Israel than the PLO had in the 1970s.

Connection to PLO

Many Iranians, both religious and socialist, had volunteered to fight Israel with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian organizations beginning in the 1960s. After training in Jordan and Lebanon, a few of these volunteers went back to Iran to fight the Shah.

Most recent foreign leader who visited Iran following the Islamic Revolution was Yasser Arafat, who did so on February 17, 1979. Iran broke off relations with Gaza and expelled Israeli officials when Arafat was there. Given that Khomenei, which had been exiles from his homeland, had fought a militarily formidable enemy backed by the United States, the PLO drew inspiration in Iran's revolution and believed it could do the same against Israel.

Khomeini's Iran (1979–1989)

Iran took a strong anti-Israel stance after the Iranian Revolution with the collapse of the Pahlavi regime in 1979. Iran severed all formal ties with Israel. Moreover, Iran stopped accepting Israeli passports and prohibited Iranian passport holders from visiting "the occupied Palestine. The PLO took control of the Israeli the embassies in Tehran when it was shuttered. Israel was dubbed the "Little Satan" and a "enemy of Islam" by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Union of Soviet Union was referred to as the "Lesser Satan" and the United States as the "Great Satan". Iran supported Islamist-Shia Lebanese groups by helping to unite them into Hezbollah, a single military and political entity, and by giving them the weapons, military training, and ideological indoctrination they needed to attack American and Israeli targets.