What A Day - How Iran and Israel Became Enemies

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel this week, in the latest escalation between the two Middle Eastern powers. But would you believe that 40 years ago the two nations enjoyed a quiet diplomacy? What happened here? And why is the rest of the Middle East once more getting sucked into the rivalry? This week on How We Got Here, Max and Erin explain why “ancient hatred” isn’t to blame, what role Lebanon and Hezbollah play, and how Donald Trump has made—and could still make—all of this much, much worse.

So listeners, we had a whole episode about the election planned for this week. Yeah, finally getting to the bottom of Tim Walz's hot dish. But then, as so often happens, American politics got interrupted by the Middle East. We are coming on the air because ABC News has now confirmed Iran has just launched a retaliatory missile attack targeting Israel. A U.S. senior administration official telling ABC News now that Iran is expected to fire 240 to 250 missiles at four targets in Israel. And then don't forget this from NBC News. Israel has launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon.

The IDF says it is conducting, quote, limited, localized and targeted ground raids against Hezbollah. Needless to say, the election episode is on hold. We've got plenty of time, right? This week, we're giving ourselves a little challenge. We're going to explain the entire crisis in the Middle East in a single 30-minute episode. Wait, the entire thing? Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Lebanon, what happened this week,

the historical roots, where it's headed, all of it. You rested and ready, Max? What? No, I was up all last night reading the news. Too bad. I'm Erin Ryan. And I'm Max Fisher. And this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question. Our question this week is a little bigger than why did Israel invade Lebanon or

why did Iran launch 180-some missiles at Israel? Our question this week is, why are Iran and Israel enemies in the first place? And why is the rest of the Middle East once more getting sucked into that rivalry? It's a big topic. The Cold War between Iran and Israel has for a long time now

been one of the defining forces shaping the Middle East. And also, as of this week, that Cold War is looking a lot hotter. Just a spoiler alert here, the answer to your question, Aaron, is not quote-unquote ancient hatreds. Iran and Israel were actually pretty friendly for the first 30 years of Israel's existence, and for a long time, Iran had the Middle East's largest Jewish community outside of Israel. Yeah, the story is a lot more complicated than just they've never liked each other. Right. Okay, Max, if it's not ancient hatreds, why are Iran and Israel so hostile toward one another?

One explanation you often hear is ideological. Iran had a revolution in 1979, and its pro-Western monarchy got replaced with a semi-democratic theocracy that began officially referring to Israel as, quote, the Zionist entity. That is not a very subtle way to indicate that they did not find Israel to be a legitimate state. The thing is, even after Iran's revolution and its newly anti-Israel politics, the two countries secretly cooperated against mutual enemies, like during Iran's war with Iraq. And listen to this clip of CBS News interviewing Iran's revolutionary leader, Rahola Khomeini, in 1979. That second voice is Khomeini's translator. You have spoken out against Israel.

Now, what would happen if there were another war in the Middle East? Would you put Iran's army, one of the greatest in the world, into action against Israel? We are against Israel, and we will never help Israel. We will cut off our diplomatic relation. However, sending our army against Israel in any future probable war needs a thorough study, and at this time, I do not have anything to say on that. Wow. It's always kind of been, we're at an 11, but we're paused, but we're at an 11, but we're paused. It's a classic dodge. And I know in that clip, it might sound like a wild question that Khomeini is

getting, hey, would you invade Israel? But the context is that a bunch of other Middle Eastern countries had declared war on Israel just a few years earlier in 1973 and before that in 1967 and 1948. So the question of whether the new revolutionary Iran would join in was a real one at the time. And he said no. Right. Even in 1979, at the height of Iran's revolutionary fervor, its fire-breathing supreme leader was just not that interested in conflict with Israel, and Israel was also not that focused on Iran. So it's not ancient hatred, it's not ideological, or at least not in a way that was baked into either country's politics. But for as long as I can remember, these two countries have been as hostile toward one another as two countries can be. So what changed?

Well, it kind of starts with Lebanon, the tiny country to Israel's north. Which is also where the conflict has been centered this week. Right. Back in 1975, a long civil war broke out in Lebanon. And both Israel and Iran ended up getting involved in that war, which is what first put those two countries on track for their decades-long struggle for influence in the Middle East. But they both got into Lebanon for very different reasons that had more to do with problems each of them were facing elsewhere than it did with wanting to confront each other or even really with Lebanon. So two relatively powerful countries, Iran and Israel, meddling in a smaller one, Lebanon. Very cold war. It's very cold war,

yes. Israel invaded Lebanon twice, first in 1978, then again in 1982 to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This is the group that had been fighting Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, but it had its base of operations in Lebanon civil war was really an extension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here is a 1978 clip of Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weissman. We would like, very much like, that the PLO will understand once and for all, they will not operate from South Lebanon. Then how did Iran enter the picture? Okay, so remember when this was happening, the new revolutionary Iran had only been around for three years and it was surrounded by enemies. Countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia all saw the Iranian revolution as a threat to them too because what if it also inspired revolutions in their countries? So Iran was isolated.

It desperately needed allies in the region and it saw an opportunity to solve this problem in Lebanon. So I'm pulling up a map of the Middle East here, Max, and I'm a little puzzled because Iran is on the far eastern edge of the map, but then Lebanon and Israel are all the way over here on the western side of the map. So why would Iran look for allies all the way across the map? The short answer is religion. The new Iran was a Shia Muslim theocracy. Most of the Middle East is Sunni Muslim. But there's a sizable Shia community in Lebanon. And Iran thought that shared identity would be an opportunity, especially with Lebanon civil war dividing the country along religious lines. So Iran started arming and supplying Shia militias in Lebanon, not so much because it cared

about Lebanon, but because this was a way for Iran to extend its influence as a check on its neighbors. So Iran and Israel both got involved in Lebanon's civil war for their own reasons. How did they end up at odds? Well, geography. Israel was occupying southern Lebanon. Remember, this is where the Palestinian leadership had been based. And Iran was cultivating Lebanese Shia militias. Well, where do Lebanon Shia live? A lot of them live in southern Lebanon. Which means that those Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia militia were fighting the Israeli occupation. They were fighting everybody. But yes, that included the Israelis. And fatefully,

Iran didn't just pick any old Lebanese Shia to arm. They picked one group in particular because it was hardline and Islamist in a way that aligned with Iran's revolutionary politics. And the name of that group was Hezbollah, which means party of God. Okay, that's some pretty aggressive branding. Okay, this is the same Hezbollah that has been all over the news this week because Israel killed several of its top leaders and invaded Lebanon to root the group out, which is what triggered Iran's attack on Israel. Yes, the same. Hezbollah has been the front line of the Cold War between Israel and Iran since it was founded as an Iranian proxy 40 plus years ago. And it's also a big part of what turned that Iran-Israel struggle into one of the most important geopolitical rivalries in the world.

There are no words to properly express our outrage, and I think the outrage of all Americans, at the despicable act, following as it does on the one perpetrated several months ago in the spring that took the lives of scores of people at our embassy in that same city in Beirut. That was Reagan talking about a 1983 suicide bombing of American and French peacekeeper barracks in Beirut. The U.S. embassy had been bombed a few months earlier, which he referred to, and those attacks killed 370 people

and led the U.S. and France to withdraw from Lebanon forever. And that was Hezbollah. They never claimed responsibility, but there's pretty strong evidence that Hezbollah and Iran were behind the bombings. And Hezbollah is also thought to be responsible for bombings in the 1990s in Buenos Aires and London. Okay, so I can see how Israel and Iran being on opposite sides in Lebanon would create a lot of enmity between them. But that was 40 years ago. And I see that the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990. So why didn't the Iran-Israel Cold War end in 1992? Well, it kind of did, or it got a lot quieter anyway. Israel kept occupying southern Lebanon through the 90s, and Iran kept supplying Hezbollah's fight against that occupation.

But this relatively low-boil proxy conflict aside, neither Iran nor Israel were especially focused on one another. And then in 2000, the Israelis withdrew from Lebanon. Which would have left Iran and Israel without a proxy conflict to fight over anymore, right? Right. But then something happened that changed everything between Iran and Israel and that I would argue set off what has now been a 20-year Cold War between them that is far more dangerous than anything that came before. My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. Wow, you can almost hear how crisp and unworn that flight suit was. Here at Bending, yes. That was, of course, George W. Bush's now notorious 2003 speech declaring mission accomplished in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

So you're telling me that the Iraq War, in addition to getting tens or hundreds of thousands of people killed, setting off a whole other war in Syria, leading to the rise of ISIS, and helping create the refugee crisis in Europe that empowered Europe's far right, also sparked the Iran-Israel Cold War as we know it today? It definitely made it a lot worse. George, buddy, you're going to need to paint a lot more sad bathtub self-portraits before you listen to this next bit. Okay, Max, explain to us how the Iraq war set Iran and Israel against each other. So like with their proxy fight in Lebanon, both countries responded to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in ways that were really about looking out for themselves in a turbulent moment, but that also put them at odds. Iran, for its part, worried about the United States invading them next. Understandably, the U.S. had just toppled the governments in Afghanistan and Iraq,

both of which border Iran. Bush had called Iran part of the quote-unquote axis of evil, which still makes me nervous thinking about it today. One of our worst and most detrimental speeches maybe in American history. And Iran did a couple of things to hedge against this threat from the Americans. For one, it ramped up its nuclear program. They weren't trying to outright build a bomb, at least as best anyone can tell. Rather, they were developing something called nuclear latency. The idea was to have little pieces of a nuclear program so that in the event

of an emergency, they could rush to build a nuclear weapons program within maybe a year or two. Oh, my gosh. Like a go bag, but for engaging in nuclear war. That's right. That's exactly the idea. So you understand how they might look at Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who abandoned his nuclear program and then got toppled by the Americans, and conclude that it was worth it to keep a few centrifuges spinning just in case. Which was aimed at the United States, but that Iranian program just by existing did pose a threat to Israel too. Not because Israeli leaders thought that Iran would nuke them out of nowhere for no reason, but rather because Israel had always been the Middle East's only nuclear power. And they saw this as a big thing that kept them safe from another invasion. If another Middle Eastern power was developing a nuclear program, Israel would lose its nuclear primacy and the security that that brought it. So the first domino is Bush invading Iraq.

And the second domino is Iran ramping up its nuclear program. And then the third domino is whatever Israel did in response. What experts call a precision kill. A nuclear scientist who was a key player in Iran's nuclear program killed in broad daylight. And tonight, the dangerous tension between the U.S. and Iran has ratcheted even higher. Iran pointing the finger squarely at the U.S. and our allies in Israel. Oh, my goodness. I feel like Charlie Day standing in front of the bulletin board with the red threads, except this is real. This is how this all came about, how it's really happening.

It is absolutely real. That was an ABC News report from 2012 talking about the then latest in a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists going back to 2007. Israel hasn't officially claimed responsibility for these, but is widely understood to be responsible. And then, of course, there were years of barely veiled Israeli threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Yes, this got so overt that in 2010, the Atlantic ran a cover story based on interviews with Israeli leaders titled Israel is going to bomb Iran. Okay, well, they didn't specify when, so it still could happen. When one country threatens to bomb another, it does tend to create some tension. Anyway, Max, you said that Iran did two things after 2003 to hedge against the American threat that ended up sparking conflict with Israel. The nuclear program is one. What was the other? Proxy forces. Iran extended more and

more support to Hezbollah and Lebanon and also to the Palestinian group Hamas and to militias in Iraq. Iran saw this network as a way to extend its influence in the region, to bog down the U.S., and to act as a check on the U.S. by threatening its ally Israel. And it worked. In 2006, Israel tried to invade Lebanon again, but was turned back by Hezbollah. And the year after that, Hamas took power in Gaza, all of which left Iran with these two proxy forces, Hezbollah and Hamas, parked alongside Israel. And you sometimes hear this called the axis of resistance or the ring of fire. We need new vocabulary to name various strategic positions. I think it's hopeful.

But axis, fire, ring, we got it. Let's expand. Let's hopeful. have been possible without the Israeli occupations of the Palestinians and of southern Lebanon. And on top of that are the decades of tit for tat between Iran and Israel. But if the U.S. invasion of Iraq was gasoline on the fire of the Iranian-Israeli conflict, then in 2015, world leaders doused it with a big bucket of water. Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not. A comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Oh man, it's so sad to listen to that now.

That was Barack Obama announcing the international agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions on the country and, more informally, easing the longstanding hostility between Iran and the rest of the world. Israel was not officially party to the agreement, but the U.S. did keep the Israelis closely read in with the hopes that it would help de-escalate between Israel and Iran. And Israeli military and intelligence leaders mostly supported the deal for that reason. Yes, but right-wing Israeli political leaders opposed it. Benjamin Netanyahu even flew to Washington to give a speech to Congress opposing the deal. He claimed this was over the deal's terms, but I feel pretty safe saying his actual motivation was finding the Iran threat to be politically useful, so wanting to keep things tense, and also believing that the only real solution was to one day goad America into toppling Iran's government.

And they all got their wish three short years later. I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Oh, my God. You know, it takes so much more effort to grow a garden than it does to drive a bulldozer over it. That's beautiful, Erin. That was Donald Trump withdrawing from and effectively killing the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018. A few weeks after that, Trump threatened Iran in a tweet, of course, pledging, quote, consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. Part of what made Trump's decision so reckless and stupid was threatening Iran with war,

just as he was also pulling out all the nuclear inspections and safeguard meant to rein in its nuclear program. So, of course, Iran started the program right back up, both as a defensive measure and also because, you know, if the nuclear deal was off, then why bother sticking to it? I have to think this ramped back up the Cold War between Iran and Israel, too. It did. Iran pumped arms and supplies to more proxy groups around the Middle East, and those proxies became more assertive in confronting the U.S. and Israel. But something else happened around this time that ended up changing the course of the Iran-Israel rivalry,

and that something was the civil war in Syria. And just as a quick refresher for people, of the Iran-Israel rivalry. And that something was the civil war in Syria. And just as a quick refresher for people, in 2011, people rise up across the Middle East demanding democracy. It's called the Arab Spring. Syria's government responds by mass murdering protesters. This spirals into a civil war that has killed over half a million people,

sent almost 7 million fleeing as refugees, and is still going. Yeah, arguably a war that changed the entire world, but that is for another episode. For our purposes today, this war is significant because Syria's embattled government is a close ally of Iran's. So Iran compelled its most powerful and important proxy, Hezbollah, which is after all just across the border from Syria and Lebanon, to intervene on the Syrian government's behalf. I'm getting flashbacks to all of those mid-2010s map explainers showing who was fighting who in Syria. Listen, those map explainers kept my refrigerator stocked for years. So,

anyway, Iran succeeded in propping up Syria's government, but Hezbollah suffered deep losses in the war. And this was also a big blow to Hezbollah's reputation in the Middle East as a champion and a liberator. You know, years earlier, sure, it had thrown off an Israeli occupation, but now here it was helping Syria's hated dictator to slaughter his own people, which has become important this past year for understanding what's going on now. So let's jump ahead to the current conflict between Israel on one side and Hamas and Hezbollah, both Iranian clients, on the other. So we should say that Hamas's October 7th attack does not appear to be directly part of the proxy war between Iran and Israel. As best we know from reporting, Iran did not know the attack was coming, much less approve or aid in it. And if anything, the October 7th attack and subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza have fractured Iran's so-called

axis of resistance and maybe even broken it. Fractured it how? Well, okay, let's talk about a few things that happened after October 7. Israel invaded Gaza a few weeks later. Hezbollah and Iran both felt compelled to respond to that for a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of their influence in the Middle East relies on the idea that they alone will stand up to Israel, so they had to show that they mean it. And another reason is that Iran's network of proxies and allies is intended to function as a kind of mutual defense pact. They deter their enemies by promising to all come to one another's aid.

Okay. Like NATO. Like NATO. Yeah. So with Hamas and Gaza under attack, if Iran and Hezbollah didn't respond, then that mutual defense network would be exposed as empty. Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel. So they did respond. And this was intended to force Israel to relocate some troops to its northern border and therefore away from Gaza and also to force Israeli civilians in the north to flee their homes, which about 60,000 did. Israel responded to this by launching missiles and airstrikes into southern Lebanon. In turn, far more than Hezbollah had fired, which forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians from their homes. Then Israel hit Iran's network in a way that it never had before. Iranian state media

says a suspected Israeli strike has destroyed an Iranian embassy building in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with the senior commander in the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard among those killed. Iranian state television is reporting the senior commander is Reza Zahedi, who led the Palestinian division of the Revolutionary Guard Quds Force. OK, well, ratcheted up. Ratcheted up. That was a BBC report from April.

The attack killed seven Iranian military commanders who were thought to be involved in guiding Hamas's fight against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Bombing part of Iran's embassy is an act of war, though, right? That seems like a pretty big escalation. It is. It's an act of war, yes. And Iran responded with its own act of war by launching about 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was its first ever direct attack on the country. It was a big deal. So the Cold War wasn't cold anymore.

Not at all, no. But Iran's attack was calibrated in a way that it didn't really do any damage. And they telegraphed it enough in advance that Israel was able to shoot down a lot of the missiles. Sounds like warfare by the Goldilocks principle. Like enough for Iran to be able to say they stood up for themselves, but not so much that Israel would feel compelled to respond in turn. Biden reportedly told Netanyahu to, quote,

take the win and not retaliate against Iran, which he didn't. But Israel did continue stepping up its attacks on leaders of Iran's proxy groups. In July, a bomb went off in the luxury compound in Iran, where Hamas's political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was staying, killing him. And then this happened. On Tuesday, thousands of pagers, those low-tech devices that were high-tech for many of us back in the 90s,

exploded in the hands and pockets of suspected members of Hezbollah and on those around them. 24 hours later, the Iran-backed terror group was hit again. Only this time it was booby-trapped walkie-talkies. That was a CBS News report from September when this happened. And that was followed in turn by extensive Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon that killed seven of the group's leaders, including its commander, Hassan Nasrallah, along with more than 1,000 civilians. Max, why is this happening now? Israel is still bogged down in Gaza, where its invasion

has killed over 40,000 people and drawn international condemnation. So what is it about this moment that's got it now also targeting all these leaders and officers abroad? I think it's a few reasons. And just to be clear, none of this is to endorse or condone thinking here just to understand it. One is that there is a real sense in the Israeli security establishment that Israel can never go back to the status quo that existed before October 7th because it can never allow for another attack like that to happen again. So there's a belief that Iran's alliance network has to be weakened at almost any cost. And the Israelis are not as chastened by fear of international backlash as they might normally be because the world is already so outraged, I think rightly, over Israel's conduct in Gaza. Oh, right. We're already as mad as we can possibly be. So they might as well just keep making us mad. Right. The United States proving itself incapable or unwilling of reigning in Israel and Gaza probably made Netanyahu feel like he could get away with all this too.

I think the other big reason is that October 7th opened real fissures within Iran's network. Hamas was willing to escalate to total war with Israel, but it became clear very quickly that Hezbollah and Iran were just not. It's actually an argument that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas military chief and architect of October 7, did more damage to Iran's alliance network than any American or Israeli ever did. Because Israel has always been constrained by a belief that Iran and its allies would act as one in any conflict. And Sinwar either broke that unity or exposed it as empty. Whatever it is that's emboldened Israel, the country invaded southern Lebanon again on Monday.

Remember that Israel's last invasion of Lebanon was in 2006 when Hezbollah beat them back. But now Hezbollah has been weakened by strikes that killed many of its leaders. Hezbollah is also weaker due to that intervention in the Syrian civil war that we mentioned earlier. And according to reporting by the Financial Times, Hezbollah's involvement there also required it to drop its famously stringent security procedures in order to integrate with Syria's military. But that military was heavily infiltrated by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, which means that Hezbollah became heavily infiltrated too, which the FG reports is why Israel was able to target so many of its leaders. intelligence which means that Hezbollah became heavily infiltrated too which the FG reports is

why Israel was able to target so many of its leaders. Well this isn't over. On Tuesday Iran launched another volley of missiles at Israel and this seemed more sincere. A number of them got through though the damage was limited and no one was killed. As of this recording Israel hasn't responded but its invasion of Lebanon is continuing. It still seems like Iran wants to avoid further direct escalation, but I brought up this serious story to make a point. And now we're watching it disintegrate before our eyes, not down to nothing. I'm sure it will survive in some form, but not as it was. Max, let's say you're right, and Iran and its proxies come Israel is self-perpetuating at this point, but it's not clear how much will they have to pursue it. Iran is in a moment of decline. Its network is eroding. It's facing very difficult political and economic turmoil at home. But, you know, Israel is in rough shape, too. There's no telling what it will look like on the other side of this. Yes, it's riding high right now and having killed Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, but that's not an answer to the country's security problems. And it's now occupying two places, Gaza and southern Lebanon, that nearly broke the country when it tried to occupy them previously. And to be clear, the reason that all this matters is not gaming out the geopolitical rivalry between these two countries, but rather what that rivalry does to the millions of civilians who are caught in the middle. And the last week has shown that, especially with Israel feeling it can act with international

impunity, the toll on those civilians can be terrible. I hate to make this about me because this is extremely not, but one nuclear power and one almost nuclear power duking it out in the Middle East. Is it time to build a bunker? I think you're okay for now. World War III does not seem like it's coming. I do worry that if Iran continues to lose the proxy network that acted as its first line of defense, it could feel compelled to replace them by finally rushing for a real nuclear weapons program. But we're not at that point yet. Sounds like all the more reason to hope that Donald Trump, the guy who deliberately ratcheted up the conflict with Iran and removed its nuclear safeguards, doesn't win another term.

But that also reminds me that Iran has some pretty sophisticated disinfo apparatuses at its disposal and moving toward the election. Yikes. Sure. They're already posting through it, as they say. Let's go out with a reminder of Trump's steady hand during moments of tension with Iran. This is from 2019 after Iran shot down a U.S. drone. There was no man in it. There was no, it was just, it was over international waters, clearly over international waters, but we didn't have a man or woman in the drone. We had nobody in the drone. It would have made a big difference, let me tell you.

It would have made a big, big difference. But I have a feeling I may be wrong and I may be right, but I'm right a lot. I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn't have been doing what they did. Oh, my God. I love the gesture to gender equality by saying, or a woman in the drone.

Hell, yeah. We want feminism. Lady drone pilots. Yeah, yeah. Hire more lady drone pilots. How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher, and Erin Ryan. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Evan Sutton mixes and masters the show. Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show.

Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Vatopoulos. Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto, and Adrian Hill.