On the night of June 12 to 13, Israel launched a bombing campaign on several military, nuclear and civil infrastructure in Iran, leading to a serious climbing in the conflict: the two countries have bombed each other since. But where does this rivalry come from?
Uranium 235
For several decades, Iran has been the subject of strong monitoring of the West, and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). And for good reason, the country is suspected of seeking to obtain the nuclear bomb by enriching the uranium present on its territory up to 90%. This percentage is the threshold necessary to obtain a nuclear bomb, before that, its use is intended for civil use. In 2015, the Vienna Agreement which prohibits Iran to enrich its uranium at more than 3.67%, sufficient threshold for exclusively civil use.
However, in recent years, notably since the Gaza conflict in 2023, then the withdrawal of the United States from the agreement on May 8, 2018, Iran was suspected of no longer complying with the Vienna Agreement and enriching its uranium at extremely high rates (60%). The country was even suspected of being only a few days before being able to produce a nuclear bomb.
It was in the face of this growing risk that Israel has decided to bomb vital installations to the offensive nuclear capacity of Iran.
The fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Beyond the current conflict, this rivalry found its roots in 1979, during the Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. While the two countries had good relations, Iran being even the second Muslim majority country to recognize the State of Israel, the Revolution comes to jostle everything. Having become a Shiite theocracy with an anti-Western vision, Israel then became in the eyes of the Islamic Republic, “an illegitimate Zionist State”, occupying Palestinian lands and allied in the USA, an ideological enemy. Consequently, the newly formed Islamic Republic no longer recognizes Israel, the Israeli Embassy in Iran is replaced by a Palestian embassy and the two countries cut any diplomatic relationship.
Ayatollah and guide of the Revolution in Iran, Ali Khamenei will declare that the last day of the month of Ramadan was Quds day, therefore inviting all Muslims in the world to come out of the streets against Zionism and Israel. Subsequently, in the 1980s and still under the impulse of Khamenei, the Islamic Republic will form Shiite militias in Lebanon, notably by creating Hezbollah which will face Israel on multiple times. But also obviously Hamas, originally originally from the attack on October 7, 2023, having killed around 1,200 people on the Israeli side. This position will help to dig the gap between the two countries.
Since 1989, Ali Khamenei has been a supreme guide of Iran, and under his reign has been confirmed a strong hostility towards Israel, going so far as to say in 2009 that it is a “cancerous tumor” then in 2013, that “Israel is doomed to disappearance”.
Since 2011
Since 2011, the two have clarified indirectly in particular in Syria, where Israel conducts attacks against Iranian forces stationed in the country. But also via Hezbollah, present in southern Lebanon, on the Israeli border.
From 2022, many Israeli raids aimed at the high -ranking of the revolution guards continue to raise the situation as on April 1, 2024, when an air strike against the Iranian Consulate of Damascus in Syria left thirteen dead, including seven revolution guards.
