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To weaken Israel politically, economically, and militarily. Hamas helps erode international support for Israel and wastes economic and military resources. Hezbollah disrupts northern Israel and makes it unsafe for civilians, who may leave for the United States. Every little bit helps.
Why does Iran care about Israel so much? I get why the Arab states hated them, but what has Israel ever done to Persia? Palestinians are Sunni, not Shia, so there’s no obvious alliance there. Is it all about Jerusalem? Why don’t Pakistan or Bangladesh or Indonesia fund resistance groups? Is it just a cynical power play?
The Al-Jazeera article linked below gives a decent overview, but it's surface-level. I'll try to give a more in-depth summary. After WWII, there was significant local resistance to the traditional Middle-Eastern monarchies. These were seen as decadent, old-fashioned stooges to Western sugar daddies. Arab Nationalism, and related ideologies like Nasserism and Ba-athism, sought to cast off the yoke of these monarchies and institute modern, socialist-leaning, authoritarian governments that wouldn't be afraid to play the US and USSR against each other. Egypt was the most dramatic of these. Nasser skillfully kicked out both the monarchy and the British, and while Western governments initially had confidence in him as a reformer, he was soon regarded as a loose cannon; when the US refused to sell him arms for use against Israel, he had no problem turning to the USSR, who had no problem accommodating him. Iran would have its own shot at this in the early 1950s, which was famously cut short by the US's own covert restoration of the monarchy.
Nasser's own pan-Arab dreams would lead him to advocate for similar revolutions in other countries. Iraq and Syria would see their own revolutions, and Aden would kick out the British along similar lines. But monarchies still remained, most notably Saudi Arabia, whose close ties with the United States were regarded as suspect. When dispossessed Palestinians formed the PLO in 1964, they looked to the Pan-Arab revolutionaries for inspiration. It was a nationalist movement, but it was also socialist.
When Israel occupied the West Bank following the 6-day war in 1967, the PLO was forced into Jordan, from where they staged terrorist attacks into Israel. The problem was that Jordan was a monarchy under King Hussein. The other problem was that while Jordan was officially at war with Israel, Hussein was a pragmatist who enjoyed good relations with the United States, and he didn't like the idea of the PLO turning his country into a terrorist state. The last straw came with the PLO's attempted assassination of Hussein and overthrow of the Jordanian government in 1970. Jordanian troops would expel the PLO, who then took up in Lebanon.
So now the PLO is in southern Lebanon, and Yassir Arafat is gaining notoriety as the world's preeminent Arab terrorist. The situation is much the same as it was in Jordan, except that the Lebanese government is a mess and isn't equipped to do anything about it, giving the PLO essentially free-reign in the South. When Lebanon erupts into civil war in 1975, Israel, who supported the existing Maronite government, took the opportunity to invade and establish a buffer zone. While they got their buffer zone, it didn't eliminate the PLO, but drove them further north. By 1981, and international peacekeeping force had brokered a ceasefire agreement, which ended the war but left a peacekeeping force in place.
In the meantime, Pan-Arabism was on its last legs. Following Nasser's death, Anwar Sadat took control of Egypt in the early 1970s. With Soviet help, he took one last shot at Israel in the Yom Kippur War, but was soundly defeated. Realizing that the only hope at regaining any of the lost territory was through a negotiated settlement, he agreed to the Camp David Accords in 1978. While this didn't mean the immediate fall of the other secular states, it cast a pall on the movement as a whole. Egypt would no longer be the alpha dog in the region.
But who would? Among the remaining secular states, Iraq was the most obvious candidate, with its central location, large population, and large army. In a couple years Sadaam Hussein would rise to power in an attempt to assert this vision. Syria was small and was wrapped up in wars in Israel and Lebanon it couldn't win. Jordan had its own Israel problems; while officially at war, Hussein was too pragmatic about his relationship with the country to be openly hostile. The other monarchies were small and weak, and some were barely independent. The one that wasn't was Saudi Arabia, awash in American arms and domestic oil money. But as a monarchy, it had a credibility problem similar to Egypt's. The ruling family was significantly more conservative than most of the various Kings and Emirs, and while this meant they didn't seem as decadent as the others, it did make them seem more old-fashioned. It would be hard to unite the people around a King, of all things.
And then there was Iran. Persian where the rest of the region is Arab, Shia where the rest of the region is Sunni. Still one of the monarchies, but things are changing. An exiled Ayatollah has found something for the people to cling to that's a far cry from Pan-Arabism: Religious fervor. Guys like Nasser saw this kind of thing as detrimental to their countries' modernization, but by 1979, its day had come. Kohmeni would swoop into Tehran and depose the Shah, instituting his own ideal form of religious-led government. I'm going to assume you know about the Iranian revolution so I won't recount the story here. But there was a lesser-known revolution in Saudi Arabia around the same time. In the wake of the Ayatollah taking power, Juhayman al-Otaybi and a group of 600 fanatics seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca in an attempt to overthrow the House of Saud. The attempt was unsuccessful, but it spooked the royal family enough that they abandoned the meager steps they had taken towards modernization in favor of an increasingly Islamist policy.
By the early 1980s, there were three powers squaring off to dominate the region: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Iraq, sensing weakness in the chaos surrounding the Iranian Revolution, struck first, invading Iran in 1980. Meanwhile, Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982, laying siege to Beirut, in an attempt to drive out the PLO for good. By the end of the year, Arafat agreed to move operations to Tunis, far out of striking distance of Israel. But that didn't solve Lebanon's problems. Shiites in the south had become resentful of the constant occupations, whether from the PLO, Israel, or international peacekeepers. This resentment culminated in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and the formation of Hezbollah.
Iraq, having committed itself to a war that was looking increasingly like a stalemate, and not being too keen on the whole religious fanaticism thing, was looking less and less like the new alpha dog. Iran's chance didn't look much better. It was bogged down in the war itself, and it would be hard to find followers of Shiites in a region that was overwhelmingly Sunni. There were plenty of Shiites in Iraq, but the situation on the ground made it inconceivable that Iran would be able to draw them into its sphere. But Iran did have one advantage that Saudi Arabia didn't. In 1983, Egypt was at peace with Israel, and Hussein was unwilling to get too involved. Assad in Syria blamed Israel for everything, but he was a secular Ba'athist and his military situation wasn't great. But now there was Hezbollah, Shiites in a land of Sunnis, in perfect position to pick up where the PLO left off before being exiled to Tunis.
So Iran decided to become Hezbollah's sugar daddy. This became readily apparent to the United States relatively early. As Hezbollah started taking Americans hostages in the 1980s, it became clear to negotiators pretty quickly that they took their marching orders from Iran (the Iran-Contra Affair was an attempt to negotiate the release of these hostages). As the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown more acute over the decades, Iran has used its position as a supporter of Iran and enemy of Israel to gain support among the wider region. Consider the Abraham Accords. The basic idea behind them is that if Muslim-majority countries establish diplomatic relations with Israel, it will isolate Palestinian hardliners and force them to the negotiating table. The one potential weakness in such a policy is that, while the governments of these countries know that peace with Israel benefits them in the long run, the position is still wildly unpopular among the Arab public.
Iran knows that keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going on as long as possible is to its long-term benefit. While I agree with the Trump's policy in this area generally, I shake my head when he or Jared Kushner says that the October 7 attacks wouldn't have happened had he been president. Biden continued Trump's diplomatic policy in the region, and a year ago it looked like Saudi Arabia would be establishing relations with Israel in the not-too-distant future. October 7 provoked a response from Israel that made any chance of recognition politically impossible. A policy of alienating Hamas terrorists has been replaced by a policy of simply eliminating them. The more support Iran can give to those who are on the front lines, the more credibility they build with the Arab public, while Saudi Arabia, beholden to the United States, is forced to stand aloof. They're also far enough away from Israel that the risk of direct conflict is relatively low. This is why Israel assassinated Haniyeh in Iran. Beyond being a high-value target, it sends a message — You're not safe. We can waltz into your country any time and kill anyone we want to, and there's nothing you can do about it. Lob all the poorly-guided missiles you want to.
Whether this strategy plays out for Iran is anyone's guess. Power politics has completely overtaken religious fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, and the more extreme fanaticism of Al-Qaeda and ISIL has given the movement a bad name locally in some of these places. After 45 years, Iran's sphere of influence is limited to Hezbollah, Yemen, parts of Iraq, and Hamas, and the last of those is very recent and not exactly in a good position right now. The Saudis, meanwhile, have all the weapons and all the money. They have the West; Iran has Russia and North Korea. They've also seen internal resistance in recent years that, while it was never close to bringing down the government, was much more than Saudi Arabia has had to deal with.
Just wanted to express my appreciation of this post.
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In theory it shouldn't need to be an issue - historically, Persia/Iran has been one of the safest and friendly countries in the region to Jews, and today there's no obvious material necessity for conflict. In fact, they would seem to have common interests, especially since both the Israelis and the Iranians hate the Arabs. Israel-Turkey-Iran would be a fairly natural anti-Arab alliance.
I believe the issue is the West. Iran also very much hates the Americans and the British, for understandable reasons going back to WWII and earlier, and Israel is understood to be a proxy or ally of those powers in the Middle East. Ideologically, after the revolution Iran also developed a view of itself as the aspiring champion of Islam, and insofar as Israel represents a major non-Islamic incursion on to core Islamic territory, attacking Israel is a great way to make that view credible to others.
The spiritual leadership of the Islamic world is something valuable, and multiple powers have sought to assume that role before. The most natural candidate for it is usually whoever controls the Hejaz, which at present is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis make a good effort at this - they're the Guardians of the Holy Places, which counts for much. However, the Saudis are also visibly quite corrupt, they're closely linked to the Americans, and the Saudis are also now warming towards and becoming more friendly to Israel. Championing the Palestinian cause gives Iran an avenue into undermining Saudi Arabia's position. They're failing to act as the leader of the Islamic world; therefore we will assume that role.
This isn't really about Palestine in a direct sense. The idea of Palestine as a 'nation of martyrs' has great pull in the Islamic world, and supporting or championing Palestine is a good way to get credit as a leader of Islam. However, that doesn't extend to actually caring about Palestinian people or wanting the situation resolved. That was why, immediately after October 7, Hezbollah chucked a few rockets across the border but kept it fairly limited, to avoid escalation. Generally Iran does the minimum needed to make their claim to be the leader of the Islamic world seem credible, but pulls back before it does anything truly risky. Iran doesn't want to fight Israel. Iran wants to be seen to fight Israel.
They're pushing it a bit more at the moment - contra the OP, they haven't formally declared war, but as the conflict escalates, they need to increase their commitment in order to maintain the perception that they're the leaders. Of course, this may eventually lead them into a war that no one truly wants...
There's also the dimension of political boogeymen and a common enemy are nice unifying forces. Iran is going through a rough time domestically, in part due to the West, in part not, but having someone to blame and to criticize is useful.
Plus, there's also some bad blood dating back to the Bush years, when Iran felt backstabbed by Bush including them in the "axis of evil", a missed era of rapprochement as far as I'm aware (IIRC, things were very slowly on the mend but there might be some other issue I forget about). No accident Ahmadinejad becomes president in 2005, who presided over a classic period of "death to America" and I believe some heightened Israeli hostility too.
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There’s actually pretty good secular geo-strategic power politics reasons. Without the other, Israel or Iran would probably dominate the Persian Gulf Arab States. They’re both frustrating the other’s shot at being a major regional power. That’s why this conflict didn’t really start coming to a head until after Iraq turned into a failed state.
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History that I'm unfamiliar with, but this article seems to sum it up decently. I'm sure there's more to it.
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