00:00Before they became bitter enemies, Iran and Israel shared a fascinating, covert strategic partnership.
00:06A 30-year relationship born in the shadows and shattered by revolution dot following Israel's independence,
00:12the country faced a hostile Arab world.
00:15To survive, Israel engineered the Periphery Doctrine, a high-stakes strategy to bypass hostile neighbors,
00:21by building tight alliances with non-Arab powers on the outer rim of the Middle East,
00:26specifically Turkey, Ethiopia, and Iran dot under the Shah.
00:31Iran saw Israel as a natural, lucrative ally.
00:34Both nations shared a mutual dread of Soviet expansion and radical Arab nationalism from Egypt and Iraq.
00:41While the relationship was kept informal to avoid backlash, behind closed doors it blossomed into a massive alliance.
00:47The terms of this silent pact were simple.
00:50Oil for intelligence.
00:51Iran quietly fueled the Israeli economy, supplying the vast majority of its petroleum needs.
00:58In exchange, Israel provided the Shah with cutting-edge tech, advanced military hardware, and specialized intelligence training.
01:06Operatives from Israel's Mossad and the CIA explicitly trained the Shah's feared secret police force, SABAC,
01:12to crush internal dissent.
01:15Then came 1979.
01:17The Iranian revolution swept the Shah from power, replacing the monarchy with an Islamic republic, led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
01:25Overnight, the landscape fractured.
01:27The new regime instantly revoked its recognition of Israel, branded it the Little Satan,
01:32and handed the former Israeli embassy in Tehran straight to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
01:37Yet, the ghost of their old pragmatism lingered.
01:41When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, threatening the new regime's survival, Israel quietly stepped back into the shadows.
01:50Fearing an Iraqi victory, Israel secretly funneled critical military equipment and weapons to Tehran throughout the Iran-Iraq war.
01:58That shanal deal that eventually exploded into global headlines during the infamous Iran-Contra scandal, but by the 1990s.
02:07The common threats that once bound them dissolved.
02:10Pragmatism vanished, giving way to unyielding ideological warfare.
02:14Iran began systematically arming a lethal network of regional proxies, including Hezbollah and Hamas, designed to target Israel.
02:22Israel retaliated by launching a permanent Cold War of cyber-sabotage, targeted assassinations of scientists, and military strikes to halt
02:31Iran's nuclear ambitions.
02:33The secret partners of the 20th century transformed into ultimate adversaries, locking the modern Middle East in an invisible, high
02:40-tension shadow war settled entirely in the dark.
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