In January 1979, as Iran’s Islamic Revolution was in full swing, the country’s interim Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar made a dramatic request to Eliezer Tsafrir, the Mossad station chief in Tehran.
As the rebels were gaining ground, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government asked Mossad to assassinate Ruhollah Khomeini at his exile residence in Paris, France.
After careful deliberations, Mossad decided not to go ahead with the plan. One of the main reasons was that Mossad was not sure what Khomeini stood for, and they hoped the new Iranian regime might be more friendly to Israel.
However, the incident underscores an important point. The unusually close security and intelligence relationship between Iran and Israel during that time.
As Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement last week, a mutual security pact that declares that an armed attack on any one of the three will be treated as an attack on all, two regional countries that are worried are Israel and Iran, as both have reasons to believe that the alliance is targeted against them.
It may sound crazy now, but many EurAsian Times readers are asking if Israel and Iran, notwithstanding their existential hostility, could forge a similar mutual defense agreement to counter and deter the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey “Mecca Pact”?
In other words, can hardcore national interests triumph over ideology?
The Saudi-Paksitan-Turkey Alliance
On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement.
It follows the September 2025 Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement between Riyadh and Islamabad, which similarly has a mutual defense clause.
The alliance brings together the complementary strengths of each member: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal (the only Muslim country to have nuclear warheads) and large army; Saudi Arabia’s petrodollars, energy security, and Islamic legitimacy; and Turkey’s NATO experience and defense industry.
The agreement was signed at a time when Gulf countries are under constant attack from Iran, and the US security guarantees for the oil-rich Gulf monarchies have been unraveled as insufficient.
While the alliance underscores the US’s weakening footprint in the region, the two regional countries that are observing every move closely are Israel and Iran.
Both Tehran and Jerusalem have reasons to believe that the alliance is aimed at limiting their expanding regional clout.
Iran could rightly believe that the Sunni alliance is aimed at curtailing the rising Shia influence in the region. Saudi Arabia and Iran have historically been adversaries, fighting for influence in West Asia.
Tehran would also be cautious that the agreement could revive neo-Ottoman fantasies in Ankara.
Further, Iran is bordered by Pakistan in the East, Turkey in the North, and Saudi Arabia to the west. Tehran could rightly see it as an attempt to encircle it.
Given that Saudis are already fighting the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, Tehran fears that now both Pakistan and Turkey can supply arms and resources to anti-Houthi forces.
Similarly, Israel sees Turkey as its main regional competitor. Jerusalem has accused Ankara of supporting Hamas, and the interests of the two countries are increasingly at odds in Syria.
Can the mutual insecurities, triggered by the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance, bring Iran and Israel together?
When Israel and Iran Were Friends
Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel.
Iran voted against the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine and against Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949.
However, in 1950, the Iranian government granted de facto recognition to Israel. Both countries also maintained a small diplomatic presence in each other’s capital.
The Shah publicly reaffirmed the de facto recognition of Israel again in 1960. Israel maintained a permanent delegation in Tehran that functioned as a de facto embassy. Ambassadors were exchanged in the late 1970s, and there were direct flights between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
During this time, Israel cultivated Iran as a non-Arab Muslim country to blunt the Arab countries’ opposition to its existence.
Israel pursued David Ben-Gurion’s “Alliance of the Periphery”, seeking partnerships with non-Arab regional states such as Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia to counter isolation by Arab states.
Iran became a vital oil supplier to Israel, especially after the 1967 Six-Day War when Arab producers imposed embargoes. The two countries jointly developed the Eilat-Ashkelon (Trans-Israel) oil pipeline to transport Iranian oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean for Israeli use and onward shipment to Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal and Arab restrictions.
Military and intelligence links were extensive, but secretive.
A major late project was Project Flower (1977–1979), one of several oil-for-arms agreements signed in 1977, under which the two countries decided to jointly develop long-range missiles.
Israel’s Mossad and the US’s CIA played a major role in establishing Iran’s SAVAK, the Shah’s intelligence and security organization, established in 1957. Iranian officers also received specialized training in Israel.
During this era, the secret agencies of both countries shared the same threat perception: Pan Arab nationalism, Baathist ideology in Syria and Iraq, and rising Soviet influence in the region.
It was in this background that the Iranian government felt comfortable enough to ask Mossad to assassinate Khomeini, a request ultimately rejected by Mossad.
The situation changed after the 1979 revolution, when the new Iranian regime defined hostility to Israel as its core ideology.
Ironically, Mossad refused to assassinate Khomeini in 1979, but went ahead and killed Ali Khamenei in 2026 in an airstrike.
The question is, in the radically changed geopolitical environment of the Middle East, could Israel and Iran once again come together against the common threat of a Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey security alliance?
Could Israel and Iran Form A Security Alliance?
An Israel-Iran security alliance might seem like an impossibility. However, history is full of surprise security alliances that seemed impossible until just a few months ago.
In March 1979, barely a month after the Iranian Revolution reversed the friendly Tehran-Tel Aviv relationship, Israel pulled a diplomatic coup by signing a security alliance with Egypt, with which it had fought a war in 1967.
This was Israel’s first security pact with an Arab state.
In September 2020, the UAE signed the Abraham Accords, recognizing the state of Israel.
The 2023 Saudi-Iran agreement was also highly unlikely and came as a surprise.
Similarly, in 1987, the Soviet Union and the USA agreed to eliminate an entire class of nuclear and conventional missiles. This arms reduction treaty was seen as impossible during the Cold War.
These examples highlight how shifts in leadership, external mediation, changing strategic interests, or exhaustion from conflict can enable agreements once considered out of reach and that hardcore national interest can override ideology.
However, for an alliance involving Israel and Iran, certain conditions must be met first.
Firstly, no Israel-Iran agreement is possible under the current Iranian regime, which defines hostility to Israel as its core identity. Iran has, for decades, supported anti-Israel non-state actors, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Opposition to the US and Israel is the core philosophy of the IRGC.
Therefore, a security agreement is unlikely till the same regime holds power in Tehran. However, as seen in January this year, the regime remains deeply unpopular, and once the threat of external aggression is gone, internal contradictions will once again come to the fore.
In the post-IRGC dispensation, Tehran could see merit in aligning with Israel.
A nationalist government in Tehran that stresses its Persian identity more than its revolutionary Islamic identity could align with Jerusalem to neutralize rising Saudi and Turkish influence in the region.
Secondly, if the emerging Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alignment begins taking concrete steps to challenge or diminish Iranian and Israeli influence across the region, both Tehran and Jerusalem would likely conclude that they need to forge their own counter-alliances to balance against this trilateral bloc.
In such an alliance, Israel could provide high-tech defense weapons, such as its battle-tested air defense systems and its pan-Arabic intelligence network, whereas Tehran could provide energy security, strategic geography, and a robust defense-industrial base.
Such an alliance could be secretive and focus more on intelligence sharing than on explicitly committing to mutual defense.
However, the old security architecture in the Middle East has collapsed, and from the prevailing uncertainty, new security alliances between unlikely partners could become the norm.
The era of fixed blocs, it seems, is over, and in the new environment, fluid and adaptive security alliances could emerge.
The Middle East is truly multi-polar now, with many axes and centers of power. In this fluid situation, one should not rule out that even Israel and Iran, two sworn enemies, could at some point come together for their transactional national interests.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
