Freeing Palestine? What Iran is Really Looking For

By Bernard Hourcade

What dictates Tehran’s policy in the Middle East? More than support for Palestine, the Islamic Republic’s primary goal is to oppose a restructuring of the region dictated by Israel and the United States that would marginalize it, while it is trying to reconcile with the Gulf countries.

Yasser Arafat’s visit to Tehran on February 17, 1979, a few days after the fall of the imperial regime, was a trauma for Israel. Iran, an ally of the United States, was a major part of the “second circle” of non-Arab countries (with Ethiopia and Turkey), beyond hostile neighbors, and supplied Israel with oil while the Mossad maintained effective collaboration with Savak, the political police of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In all areas, the seizure of power in Tehran by an alliance of liberals, Marxists and especially Islamists, all close to the Palestinians, was going to shake the old regional order. The Israeli embassy became that of Fatah and Palestine, a symbol and a tool, even a passport, for Shiite Iran in its plans to export the revolution to a Middle East with an Arab and Sunni majority. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose hostility to Israel was unwavering, however, put things right by specifying to his supporters trained in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon or Syria that "there is no Palestinian cause, but an Islamic cause". The national and ideological stakes of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) then dominated all other conflicts, including the too local one of Palestine. 

"THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM PASSES THROUGH KERBALA"

In fact, beyond the fiery speeches, the Islamic Republic has remained cautious in the face of Palestinian movements such as Fatah, which is nationalist and not very religious. When Israel occupied Lebanon in 1982 and forced Yasser Arafat to take refuge in Tunisia, Ayatollah Khomeini blocked the departure of armed militants who wanted to "liberate Jerusalem" by telling them that "the road to Jerusalem passes through Kerbala1". The priority was to defend Iranian national territory attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

From then on, Iran began to very actively support the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite and Lebanese movement that could both fight Israel and its Western allies while collaborating with Syria, Iran's only Arab ally. Realpolitik also led Israel to supply weapons to Iran2 and to collaborate in destroying the Iraqi nuclear power plant in Osirak. Iraq was then the only real enemy of Israel and Iran.

Subsequently, Tehran did not hold back its support for Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which opened an office in Tehran in 1988. But the Islamic Republic was not a major player in the two Intifadas (1987-1993; 2000-2005), despite the presence of military advisers from the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon. It worked primarily to strengthen the Lebanese Hezbollah, which would play a central role in its regional policy, to oppose Israel, but especially the United States and its European allies, as well as the Sunni Arab states. The election of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), an expert on Lebanon and supporter of the Palestinian cause, marked a shift. He was not opposed to compromise solutions with Israel. After the Oslo Accords (1993), he intended to “be no more Palestinian than the Palestinians”. This conciliatory attitude and support for the emergence of a Palestinian state, however, ran into opposition from the leader Ali Khamenei and conservative factions, and it was shattered by the emergence of the “Iranian nuclear threat” from 2002.

THE NUCLEAR SCARECROW

The discovery in 2002 of the hitherto clandestine Iranian nuclear program triggered debates, controversies, colloquiums, conferences, publications, films, speeches, at the highest level of states as well as among the populations concerned. All other issues in the Middle East became secondary. The Islamic Republic was designated as the main threat to Western Europe and also to Israel. Iran replaced the recently defunct Soviet Union in world politics. A place, perhaps, oversized for a country that then had only a few grams of enriched uranium compared to Israel's 300 nuclear warheads and the arsenal of the five major nuclear powers.

While Israel had always had a cult of secrecy in matters of defense, it was surprising to note that the "Iranian nuclear threat" was the subject of information and passionate debates in the Israeli press and media. It was presented as existential for Israel. In this context, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement of October 26, 2005, "Israel must be wiped off the map," became proof of the need for Israel to eradicate this threat as a priority. Palestine, locked behind a wall, was no longer a major problem. While at the UN, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the support of the West, accused Tehran, Israel continued with impunity the colonization of the West Bank. Signed in Vienna on July 14, 2015, the JCPOA offered a framework agreement to control the civilian use of Iranian nuclear power in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions. It had been endorsed by the P5+1 countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany), as well as by the European Union. But in 2018, President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from it under Israeli pressure. The Israeli military had nevertheless recognized that this compromise was a real step forward in terms of security, but for the Netanyahu government, the risk was the lifting of sanctions, and therefore the “normalization” of Iran. The unspoken fear was that Iran, with its large, highly educated population, would become in the short/medium term a strong and stable regional power, capable of challenging Israel’s regional ambitions to reshape the entire region to its own ends.

This hostility also concerned the "hegemonic ambitions of Iran" which supported many non-state forces in the context of conflicts with Israel, but also with Saudi Arabia, then in its fight against the Islamic State Organization (ISO) in Iraq and Syria or to support the Syrian regime. These issues were a consensus between Western countries and Israel, and placed little Palestine outside the international priorities.

With a view to a confrontation to eradicate the "Iranian threat", Donald Trump's government took a decisive step in 2020 with the signing of the Abraham Accords. The recognition of Israel by several Muslim states, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), concretized the Israeli-American desire to encircle the Islamic Republic. The prospect of Saudi Arabia joining them risked destroying the national and consensual ambitions between the different factions in power in Iran: to become a regional power.

CHINA IMPOSES ITSELF DISCREETLY

Saudi Arabia and Iran were on the brink of war when, on March 10, 2023, China forced the two “Gulf policemen” to normalize their relations. This marked the beginning of a new phase in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Despite the rhetoric, Iran’s nuclear program is no longer at the heart of the debate. The debate is now centered on the opposition between two perspectives for reshaping the Middle East: either around Israel and the United States, or more independently, under the aegis of Iran and Saudi Arabia, emerging regional powers, with the support of the countries of the South and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

This Iranian desire was already explicit after the election of Hassan Rouhani to the presidency in 2013, then with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the normalization of the country’s international relations. Iran, with the agreement of the Supreme Leader, had then prioritized building good relations with all its border countries from which a threat could come, as in 1980 with Iraq or in 2015 with the IS. Building peaceful relations with Riyadh has become a priority. China's intervention has made it possible to quickly conclude the indirect discussions that had been underway for a long time to put an end to the multiple local conflicts in progress, particularly in Yemen. Among the thousand issues to be resolved, one observation seems to have reached consensus: the need to quickly find a just and lasting solution to the "Palestinian question" which concerned the entire region, and even the entire Muslim world. Any project to reshape the region was illusory as long as this injustice persisted. This compromise project on the "return" of Palestine came about in the worst conditions with the violence of the intervention of the military branch of Hamas on October 7, 2023, then the war against Gaza and against Lebanon.

NOT GETTING DRIVEN

We will not return to these events here, except to note that Iran sought to avoid being drawn into a “local” Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Islamic Republic certainly wanted to protect Hezbollah and its powerful arsenal in order to maintain a credible means of deterrence against Israel, and to maintain its potential for influence in Lebanon. But it did not want to give in to Israeli provocations that could lead to a large-scale war involving the United States.

Iran does not have the military means to “win” a war against Israel 1,200 km away. In addition, it would ruin its hopes of quickly becoming a regional power coexisting with Saudi Arabia. A conflict could also cause radical changes in an Islamic Republic worn down by 45 years of power, by internal divisions exacerbated by the fear of popular revolts, and by an unprecedented economic crisis. The priority of the new reformist government of Massoud Pezeshkian, with the support of the Supreme Leader, therefore remains the lifting of the sanctions imposed again since 2018, and therefore the normalization of relations with the United States. Without success for the moment, and despite strong internal opposition, this policy of openness and caution is consistently pursued by Iran. Tehran is distancing itself from its allies in the Resistance axis, forcing Hezbollah not to massively attack northern Israel, which could have relieved Hamas in Gaza, and not to use its most powerful missiles after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. During the Friday prayer of October 5, 2024, the Guide paid a moving tribute to the courage of the Hamas and Hezbollah fighters who had shown that they could now defend themselves alone! After the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, an Iranian statement stated that it was not responsible for the drone attack on Netanyahu’s residence on October 19, and Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the operation.

The attack on Israel by more than 350 Iranian drones and missiles on April 13, 2024 marks a historic date in Iran’s new strategy of retreating to its national interests and the defense of its territory. This demonstration of technical and military force, announced in advance, was intended to show that to defend itself, Iran had the means to face its enemies alone, without the help of its proxies. The Israeli response was initially symbolic, unlike the massive air attack of October 26, which responded to this first demonstration of force rather than to the 180 missiles launched by Iran on October 1. Israel has demonstrated—without causing major damage—the remarkable capabilities of its air force and Iran’s weaknesses in countering this type of attack. Both adversaries have proven that a large-scale conflict would be absurd.

The most interesting thing to note is not the pressure from the United States, paralyzed by the election campaign, for Israel not to bomb Iranian nuclear and oil sites, but the new attitude of the Arab countries that have refused to allow Israeli bombers and missiles to fly over their territory. All of them—even Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain—have denounced or regretted the “aggression against Iranian national territory.” Of course, this tentative change in attitude toward Iran is the result of the work of Iranian diplomats, but it is also linked to fundamental questions about relations with Israel and the United States. As Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza and Lebanon began to call into question the West’s unconditional support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt participated in the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in late October. In this context, the prospects for political reconstruction in the region with Iran’s participation became credible by imposing a just solution for Palestine on Israel. A “victory” that would also have the support of the populations of the Arab and Muslim world.

A NATIONALIST AMBITION

The Gaza war has changed the balance of power. By directly opposing Israel, state to state, Iran is flattering the nationalist sentiment shared by the 90 million Iranians and the pride of the Muslim populations, and this national ambition for power could take precedence over the defense of Palestine. Furthermore, Israeli provocations against Iran and speeches once again stirring up the danger of its nuclear program are seeking to rally Europe and the Arab monarchies, as in the 2000s, and to make people forget Palestine. This risk is reinforced by the most conservative Iranian factions, particularly in parliament, which have just relaunched the debate so that Tehran chooses military nuclear power over Israel.

With the demonstrations of military force having been made, Iran is now prioritizing politics. The Islamic Republic presents itself as an actor of peace by relying on the fact that Israel's hubris in Gaza and Lebanon discredits the image of this country as a "democratic bulwark of civilization" and brings it closer to Saudi Arabia and the oil monarchies. The reformers who have returned to power since June 2024, with the support of Guide Ali Khamenei, are trying to be accepted, as in 2015, as a valid interlocutor by the "international community", starting with neighboring Arab countries, to contribute to the political reconstruction of the region. In vain so far. By highlighting its face-to-face with Iran, Israel is seeking to divert attention from its colonization of Palestine, and the efforts of the Iranian state are also - first of all? - a way of giving the Islamic Republic a credible reprieve. A dual priority, nationalist and ideological, which could once again make people forget distant Palestine.

So0urce: OrientXXI