A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #359 - Iran-Israel: From Understanding to Annihilation (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

1945: The end of the Nazi regime. The victors, the Americans and 
Russians, divided their spheres of influence. In the Middle East, the 
French and British decided on the countries and the future of their 
peoples. Although opposed to the British partition plan for Palestine in 
1948, Iran became, after these partitions, the second Muslim country to 
recognize Israel, after Egypt in 1950.

From 1943 onward, Jews, including many children, primarily from Poland, 
passed through Iran under Stalin's watchful eye. Between 1949 and 1952, 
many Jews leaving Iraq also passed through Iran to reach Israel.

This history led Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, to forge 
ties of friendship with Iran. Thus, Tehran became the main supplier of 
oil in exchange for supplies, weapons, technology transfers-in short, 
harmonious bilateral economic relations. This allowed Tel Aviv to avoid 
total isolation from its neighboring Arab states, hostile to this Jewish 
state imposed by the West at their expense.

In 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. The Shah's 
dictatorship, supported by the CIA and Israel, despite fierce repression 
of its population, fell under the blows of a popular revolution, notably 
led by the Shiite mullahs. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of the 
Pahlavi dynasty, was overthrown.

This revolution was led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader in 
exile in France. Upon his return to Tehran, he was acclaimed by the 
mullahs, of course, but also by nationalists, communists, and the far 
left. No doubt each group harbored opposing ulterior motives. 
Immediately, the "Guide" imposed Sharia law as the fundamental law of 
the regime. He presented himself as the defender of the poor and 
oppressed, demanded the liberation of Jerusalem as a strategic 
objective, and condemned the imperialism of the "Great Satan," the 
United States. This policy would remain a constant. Ahmadinejad, the 
sixth Iranian president, from 2005 to 2013, would make full use of it. 
He did not hesitate to denounce the existence of the State of Israel-the 
"Little Satan," a loyal ally of America-through shameless antisemitism 
and Holocaust denial. This propaganda was designed to rally the Iranian 
people around the regime. Furthermore, the Iranian resistance against 
the Shah trained and honed its skills in Lebanese training camps, 
alongside Palestinian movements.

The Iranian regime would later exploit this history and this militant 
ties, particularly with the triumphant welcome given to Yasser Arafat, 
the leader of the PLO. This cause of the liberation of occupied 
Palestine had been more or less abandoned or neglected by Sunni Arab 
countries. These countries feared these nationalist, revolutionary, and, 
in some cases, secular movements. Being a Persian and Shiite regime in a 
Sunni Arab environment led Tehran to develop and arm its "axis of 
resistance": local minorities in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and even Gaza and 
Yemen.

From 1979 onward, a shadow war took hold, marked by numerous attacks 
and assassinations, some claimed, others not, including the 1990 attack 
on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1992 killing of Abbas 
al-Musawi, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah. Israel, already a 
nuclear-armed state, was particularly concerned, fearing Iran's 
acquisition of nuclear weapons. This shadow war, which led to the 
elimination of key figures in the Iranian nuclear program, continued in 
Syria in 2011 during the civil war and in 2021 through mutual attacks on 
ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

In 1979, following the fall of the Shah, Iranian students stormed the 
American embassy in Tehran, taking 50 hostages, including diplomats. 
They will be detained for 14 months. Washington will then impose 
sanctions and decree an embargo. But while the Iranian mullahs reject 
the Great Satan, they are wary of support from the USSR, a communist, 
materialistic, and atheist regime.

In 1980, Iran, a rising regional power, worried Saad Hussein, president 
of neighboring Sunni Iraq, home to a large Shiite minority, viewed with 
suspicion by the regime. Another point of contention was the Khuzestan 
region, claimed by Baghdad. This region, rich in hydrocarbons and other 
minerals, held a dominant position on the Persian Gulf. But this 
confrontation was also ideological, between the Iranian Shiite Islamic 
theocracy and the military regime under the control of the Iraqi Ba'ath 
Party, which was Sunni and secular.

Saad Hussein saw Iran weakened. His surprise attack would soon become 
bogged down in a protracted war of attrition. A war that lasted eight 
years (1980-1988), and ended with a ceasefire signed under the auspices 
of the UN, resulting in a human toll of 600,000 deaths. A figure that is 
still debated.

But such conflicts could not exist or last without the backers, the 
imperialist patrons, their subordinates, and the state and private arms 
dealers. Russia, France, and China, acting either directly or jointly, 
supply 85% of the Iraqis with weapons, while Washington, Tel Aviv, and, 
of course, European countries, including France, supply both sides. 
Business is business. Despite the animosity toward the "little Satan," 
Israel operates in secret. Clandestine arms sales continue, and military 
instructors are sent to Iran.

It is through these reciprocal favors that Tel Aviv is able to bomb the 
Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak and safely evacuate numerous Iranian 
Jews from Iran to Israel or the United States: a community estimated at 
60,000 people.

Israel, still isolated in a hostile environment, found a new opportunity 
through Iran to combat the main threat to its policy: Sahrawi Hussein 
and his hegemonic ambitions in the region. As the war progressed, 
shipments of weapons and spare parts of all kinds flowed into Iran. Tel 
Aviv, supported by the CIA, became the mastermind of a flourishing 
clandestine trade on a near-industrial scale, worth up to $500 million a 
year. Weapons in exchange for oil. Ronald Reagan succeeded John Carter 
in the White House. Negotiations, waiting, and blackmail over the 
release of hostages... Washington turned a blind eye to the actions of 
its establishment members with Israel, which was then exempt from any 
sanctions related to circumventing the embargo.

But imperialism and the arms trade brought other sources of weaponry to 
both belligerents, ensuring that neither side would prevail. Each of 
these weapons, of Soviet, French, and other origins, were found to have 
transited through Eastern European countries, Libya, Syria, and even 
North Korea.

It's worth remembering that Soviet and American imperialism were also 
clashing in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion, in Angola, and in 
Nicaragua with the Sandinistas' rise to power. The 1986 Iran-Contra 
scandal revealed these trafficking operations and exposed the mechanisms 
of secret deliveries and funds destined for Iran that ended up in 
Nicaragua to fuel the Contra counter-revolution. Israel's presence was 
noted, but under the supervision of the CIA.

After Komeyni's death in 1989, his successor, Ayatollah Ali Kameney, 
steered the mullahs' theocratic policies toward a politico-religious 
regime where the rising power of the Revolutionary Guards (the Pasdaran) 
would maintain order and wield political and economic power. A 
dictatorial government centered around the Ayatollah was established, 
militarized, and any protest or challenge to the regime was ruthlessly 
suppressed. This occurred in 2009, 2019, 2022, and 2025, with the death 
toll seemingly of little consequence. Meanwhile, in Israel, Benjamin 
Netanyahu, in power, surrounded himself with a far-right supremacist 
group and completed the Zionist vision of "Greater Israel," conceived at 
the very creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Israel became the state 
"of" the Jews and established an apartheid regime. The final challenge 
was to deal with the Palestinians. Iran became the obsessive enemy.

With Washington's approval and the legitimacy of the Europeans, after 
weakening Tehran's proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza by eliminating 
their leaders, especially those most open to dialogue, tensions rose 
between the two countries. The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and the 
hostage-taking, undermined the security and inviolability of Israeli 
territory, so often asserted by the Tel Aviv government. This opens up 
the prospect of getting rid of the Palestinians and committing 
"genocide" against them not only through bombs but also through hunger, 
thirst, lack of medical care, etc.

Since the dead do not have the same value, the mullahs' repression 
dominates our media landscape, while the Palestinian deaths and the 
accompanying barbarity are legitimized by Western Europe, including 
France, through the "right for Israel to defend itself," which implies 
Israel's right to "expand." The same applies to the denunciation of the 
religious regime of the mullahs in Iran, but no one thinks to denounce 
the theocratic regime in place in Tel Aviv with its ultra-Orthodox Jews, 
or D. Trump praying in the White House...

While Tehran has relentlessly exploited the Palestinian cause against 
the "little Satan," Tel Aviv, in turn, has relentlessly denounced and 
used as a pretext the Iranian threat and its nuclear arsenal, a threat 
thus far denied by the IAEA, the UN's international agency.

From cordial understanding to destruction, each side has manipulated 
the other for the sake of its domestic policy, targeting its own 
population, pursuing its ambitions for regional hegemony, and also 
driven by a thirst for power.

Decaen 7 03 2026

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4688
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