Danger of war in the Middle East

Iran and Israel: from friend to worst enemy

Missiles wherever the eye falls: people in the Iranian capital Tehran celebrate the Iranian attack.(Bild: AFP)

Iran and Israel are on the brink of a major war. On the one side a nuclear power, on the other one that wants to be one soon. Today, Iran wants to wipe out Israel. Yet the two countries once enjoyed good relations.  

In Israel, there is a 200-kilometer-long monument to the almost three decades of friendship between Israel and Iran: the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, which runs right through Israel and was completed at the end of the 1960s to transport Iranian oil to the Mediterranean. The Shah of Persia, Shah Reza Pahlawi, regarded Israel as a friend. Former Israeli head of government David Ben-Gurion planned an alliance with Persia and the then secular Republic of Turkey in the 1950s. But the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the seizure of power by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini changed everything. Since then, the annihilation of Israel has been Iran's raison d'être.