They called it a “miracle.” June 7, 1981. Israeli fighter jets soared over enemy airspace, unchallenged, and flattened Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in under two minutes. No warning. No leaks. No Arab retaliation.
But behind that miracle was something stranger. Something almost no one wanted to believe:
Iran knew. And Iran helped.
“Death to Israel,” But Pass the Missiles
It sounds absurd. A Shia theocracy and a Jewish state working together? But the 1980s weren’t just violent—they were layered. That year, both Iran and Israel had one common fear: Saddam’s Iraq. And in geopolitics, shared enemies make strange bedfellows.
“Israel viewed Saddam’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat,” said Israeli historian Avner Cohen. “They couldn’t afford to wait. Iran, meanwhile, was already at war with Iraq. There was a silent convergence of interest.”
That convergence led to backdoor cooperation. During the early years of the Iran-Iraq war, Israel secretly supplied Iran with American-made weapons—yes, the same Iran that chanted “Death to America” in the streets of Tehran. It was part of what would later be exposed as the Iran–Contra Affair, but the groundwork was already being laid by 1981.
Declassified CIA documents confirm the links. And arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar—later dubbed a “dubious character” by the CIA—was reportedly at the center of these covert transactions.
A Theater of Enemies, Backstage Friends
We like our conflicts simple. Black hats. White hats. But the Middle East runs on shades of grey. Iran’s public chants about Zionist enemies never stopped. Israel’s hawkish posture never softened. And yet—these same regimes found ways to share intel and coordinate, quietly.
Retired CIA officer Robert Baer once called the region “a web of temporary alliances, betrayal, and posturing.”
And this wasn’t a one-off.
In 1987, Iran reportedly warned Israel through intermediaries that Syria might attack. In return, Israel refrained from targeting Iranian arms shipments bound for Hezbollah—for a time. In public, the fire raged. In private, both sides ensured their own survival.
The Arabs in the Middle
What gets lost in this narrative is what the Arab world lost.
Iraq bled. Lebanon collapsed. Syria turned to rubble. Palestinian factions splintered. And all the while, the two regional “caliphates”—as some Arab thinkers have provocatively called Iran and Israel—tightened their grip.
“The Arab world became a stage,” said Egyptian analyst Mohamed Heikal before his death. “The main actors were not always who we thought.”
Today, Iran still markets itself as the champion of Palestinian resistance. But critics, including exiled Iranian dissidents, accuse the regime of weaponizing Palestine only when it suits Tehran’s image. “It’s not about liberating Jerusalem,” said Masih Alinejad. “It’s about exporting their revolution.”
Israel, meanwhile, has built diplomatic ties with the Gulf. But some worry this is just tactical, not transformational.
Illusions of Conflict, Real Consequences
Maybe the most unsettling part is this: What if the conflict is real—but the motives aren’t?
What if it’s not about survival, but strategy?
What if enemies are real on stage, but partners behind the curtain?
And what if Arab nations—fragmented, manipulated, exhausted—are just the scenery?
Then again, maybe silence says enough.
Sources
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Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb. Columbia University Press, 1998.
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CIA FOIA Archive: Arms Transfers to Iran
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Baer, Robert. See No Evil. Crown Publishers, 2002.
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“How Israel and Iran once worked together.” Al Jazeera, March 2012. Link
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“Iran’s secret dealings with Israel.” The Guardian, Nov 2006. Link
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