From Allies to Enemies: The U.S.-Israel-Iran Triangle

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The relationship between the United States, Israel, and Iran represents one of the most dramatic geopolitical reversals in modern history. What was once a powerful Cold War alliance has devolved into a decades-long shadow war, culminating in open military conflict in 2025.

For more than a quarter-century, the United States and Israel partnered closely with Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The three nations were united against the Soviet Union. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, that partnership instantly fractured.

It was replaced by ideological and strategic animosity that has defined Middle Eastern politics ever since. The story of this transformation is a complex saga of revolution, hostage-taking, secret arms deals, proxy wars, and a high-stakes nuclear standoff.

A pragmatic alliance of convenience, lacking any deep ideological foundation, couldn’t withstand the seismic shock of a revolution that redefined Iran’s very identity and its place in the world.

An Unlikely Alliance: The Cold War Partnership

The Strategic Triangle

In the geopolitical chessboard of the Cold War, Iran’s strategic location made it invaluable for U.S. efforts to contain the Soviet Union. U.S.-Iran relations, which began in the 19th century when America was seen as more trustworthy than colonial Britain and Russia, blossomed into close partnership after World War II.

Under the authoritarian rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran became one of America’s most important allies—a stable pillar of U.S. policy in a volatile region.

At the same time, the newly founded state of Israel found itself isolated and surrounded by hostile Arab nations. To overcome this strategic predicament, Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion developed the “periphery doctrine.”

The strategy was to leapfrog the immediate Arab threat by forging alliances with non-Arab states on the edges of the Middle East, most notably Turkey and, crucially, Iran.

This convergence of interests created a powerful, if unlikely, alliance between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran.

Recognition and Partnership

Driven by shared strategic logic, Iran became the second Muslim-majority nation after Turkey to officially recognize Israel in 1950. This was pure pragmatism, intended to manage Iranian assets in Palestine and align with Western powers, rather than an endorsement of Zionism.

This practical foundation defined the relationship for three decades—a partnership built on shared perception of threats from Soviet communism and pan-Arab nationalism championed by leaders like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Deep, If Covert, Cooperation

The U.S.-backed partnership between Israel and Iran flourished, fostering extensive cooperation often kept secret to avoid antagonizing Iran’s Arab neighbors.

The collaboration spanned critical military, intelligence, and economic sectors. Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, played a role in training the Shah’s notorious internal security service, SAVAK.

The two nations embarked on ambitious joint military ventures, including “Project Flower,” a secret program to develop an advanced sea-to-sea missile based on the American Harpoon.

Economically, the relationship was just as vital. Iran became a major and reliable oil supplier to Israel, a lifeline for the energy-poor nation. This cooperation was cemented with construction of the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, a joint venture designed to transport Iranian crude oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, servicing both Israeli and European markets.

This deep, multifaceted partnership was a cornerstone of regional order. Israel gained a powerful regional partner and secure energy source, while the Shah used the relationship to bolster ties with his ultimate patron, the United States.

The Original Sin: The 1953 Coup

The close alliance between the Shah and the West wasn’t without deep tensions. A pivotal event that would cast a long shadow over U.S.-Iran relations occurred in 1953.

Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, a nationalist, had moved to nationalize Iran’s vast oil industry, long controlled by the British. Signaling his anti-Western stance, Mosaddegh also severed diplomatic ties with Israel, which he viewed as an instrument of Western interests.

In response, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, coordinating with Britain’s MI6, orchestrated a coup that overthrew Mosaddegh and restored the Shah to absolute power.

While the coup was a short-term success for U.S. policy, cementing the Shah’s pro-American alignment for another 25 years, it proved to be a long-term disaster.

The intervention planted a deep and bitter seed of anti-American resentment within Iranian society. The overthrow of a popular, democratically elected leader became a powerful symbol of American imperialism and interference.

This narrative of American meddling would be skillfully exploited by revolutionary forces a generation later, becoming key justification for overthrowing the Shah and establishing a regime whose identity was built on opposition to the United States.

The alliance, built on convenience of shared enemies, lacked the ideological or cultural foundation to survive a fundamental shift in Iran’s own identity. When revolution came, the very factors that made the U.S. and Israel indispensable allies to the Shah made them the perfect, pre-packaged enemies for his successors.

1979: The Year Everything Changed

The Fall of the Shah

On February 11, 1979, the decades-long alliance between Iran, the United States, and Israel came to a sudden and violent end. The Iranian Revolution, a popular uprising led by exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, swept away the authoritarian regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The Shah’s deep dependence on the United States, his covert but extensive relationship with Israel, and his regime’s repressive policies had fueled widespread dissent. This provided potent ammunition for revolutionary clerics who promised a new path for Iran.

Immediate Reversal

The new Islamic Republic immediately and radically reoriented Iran’s foreign policy. The foundational principle of the new regime was opposition to foreign, particularly American, influence.

On February 18, 1979, just days after the revolution’s triumph, Iran officially severed all ties with Israel. In a powerfully symbolic move, the Israeli embassy in Tehran was closed and its keys handed over to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which promptly established it as the official Palestinian embassy.

The Great and Little Satans

This dramatic reversal wasn’t merely a policy shift—it was a core component of the new regime’s identity. Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers recast the world order, branding the United States the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Little Satan.”

This was more than inflammatory rhetoric; it was strategic necessity. The regime required an external enemy, a “bogeyman,” to justify its revolutionary agenda, suppress domestic dissent, and unite supporters against a common foe.

The U.S. and Israel, as primary patrons of the despised Shah, fit the role perfectly. The narrative of an “oppressive power” like the United States seeking to dominate other nations became a central tenet of the Islamic Republic’s worldview.

It justified the regime’s own authoritarian measures and confrontational foreign policy.

The Hostage Crisis: The Definitive Break

Any lingering possibility of functional relations between Washington and Tehran was destroyed in November 1979. Enraged by President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow the exiled and ailing Shah into the United States for medical treatment, radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

They took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage, holding them captive for 444 agonizing days.

The Iran hostage crisis became the defining event in U.S.-Iran relations. It dominated American television screens and public consciousness for over a year, creating deep and lasting national trauma.

For many Americans, the crisis cemented an image of Iran as a hostile, irrational, and terrorist-sponsoring state. On April 7, 1980, the United States formally severed all diplomatic relations with Iran, a break that has never been repaired.

In response to the crisis, the Carter administration imposed the first significant wave of U.S. sanctions, issuing Executive Order 12170 to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian government assets held in the United States.

The hostage crisis did more than break diplomatic ties—it created a powerful political scar in the American psyche. The memory of 1979 has cast a long shadow over every subsequent U.S. administration, making any attempt at diplomatic engagement with Tehran politically perilous.

Opponents of diplomacy have consistently invoked the crisis to frame any negotiation as appeasement of an untrustworthy and fundamentally malevolent regime. This enduring political constraint has consistently pushed U.S. policy toward a default posture of hostility and suspicion.

This stance has been mutually reinforced by Israel’s own deep-seated enmity toward the Islamic Republic.

A Tangled Web: The Iran-Iraq War Era

Shifting Alliances

The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in September 1980 plunged the region into eight years of brutal conflict and created a web of complex and contradictory alliances.

The official policy of the Reagan administration was to prevent either Iran or Iraq from achieving decisive victory and dominating the Persian Gulf’s vital energy supplies. Publicly, and for much of the war, this translated into a “tilt” toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The U.S. provided Baghdad with critical CIA intelligence, which proved instrumental in thwarting Iranian military offensives.

Israel’s Different Perspective

Israel viewed the strategic landscape from a completely different perspective. In the 1980s, Israeli leaders were “obsessed by the Iraqi threat,” viewing Saddam’s powerful conventional army as a far greater and more immediate existential danger than the fledgling, war-torn Islamic Republic of Iran.

This threat perception led Israel to take a position directly opposite to that of its American ally. Seeking to bog down and weaken its Iraqi adversary, Israel covertly began to aid Iran.

Throughout the war, Israel became the “only consistent source of spare parts” for Iran’s American-made F-4 and F-14 fighter jets—a critical lifeline for an Iranian air force under strict U.S. arms embargo.

The Iran-Contra Scandal

This secret Israeli support for Iran laid the groundwork for one of the most significant political scandals in modern American history: the Iran-Contra affair.

The affair, which ran from roughly 1985 to 1987, grew out of two separate and secret Reagan administration operations that eventually became intertwined.

The Hostage Motivation: The first was a desperate attempt to free seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group with deep ties to Iran.

Israeli leaders, including Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, persistently lobbied their Washington counterparts, arguing that a moderate faction existed within the Iranian regime that could be cultivated through arms sales.

They proposed that Israel could act as intermediary, shipping U.S.-made weapons to Iran in exchange for Tehran using its influence to secure the hostages’ release.

The Contra Connection: The second, and more illegal, motivation was finding a secret source of funding for the Contras, a right-wing rebel group fighting to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Congress had explicitly forbidden such aid by passing the Boland Amendment, which President Reagan had signed into law. To circumvent this, National Security Council staffer Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North devised a scheme to overcharge Iran for weapons and divert profits to the Contras through a clandestine network known as “the Enterprise.”

Stunning Contradictions: The entire operation was a stunning contradiction of stated U.S. policy. While the Reagan administration was publicly leading “Operation Staunch,” a global diplomatic effort to stop all arms sales to Iran, it was secretly authorizing its own illegal sales through Israeli intermediaries.

The scandal erupted in late 1986, leading to multiple investigations, several high-profile indictments, and a major crisis for the Reagan presidency.

The episode revealed stunning historical irony: the same U.S. and Israeli leadership that would later spearhead a global campaign to isolate and disarm Iran were, for a time, its secret arms dealers. Strategic priorities are dictated by immediate threat perceptions, not by immutable ideological divides.

Birth of the Proxy Strategy

The turbulent conflicts of the 1980s also saw the birth of Iran’s most enduring and effective military strategy.

In response to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Iran dispatched members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the region. There, inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology, they helped found, train, and fund a new Shiite militant group: Hezbollah, the “Party of God.”

Hezbollah’s creation marked the beginning of Iran’s “proxy network,” later dubbed the “Axis of Resistance.” Unable to confront powerful enemies like the United States and Israel directly, Iran developed a sophisticated strategy of asymmetric warfare.

It cultivated a network of allied non-state actors across the Middle East, arming and funding them to fight its battles by proxy. This approach allowed Tehran to project power, challenge adversaries, and retaliate for attacks, all while maintaining plausible deniability and avoiding immense costs and risks of direct conventional war.

This proxy strategy would become the defining feature of Iran’s military doctrine for decades to come.

The Nuclear Shadow

A New Focal Point

The end of the Cold War and decisive defeat of Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War fundamentally altered the Middle East’s strategic landscape. With common enemies of the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq either gone or severely weakened, the ideological chasm between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.S.-Israel alliance became the region’s primary fault line.

Beginning in the 1990s, and intensifying dramatically after the public revelation of secret, undisclosed Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak in 2002, a new issue came to dominate the conflict: Iran’s nuclear program.

From that moment forward, Iran’s atomic ambitions became the central and all-consuming focus of U.S. and Israeli policy. The possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran was seen not just as a threat, but as a potential cataclysm that would upend regional stability, trigger a nuclear arms race, and pose unacceptable danger to global security.

Israel’s Existential Threat Doctrine

For Israel, the Iranian nuclear program was framed in the starkest possible terms. Successive Israeli governments, particularly those led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, articulated a doctrine that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a genuine “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

This wasn’t merely a strategic assessment—it was a deeply felt historical fear. Israeli leaders frequently invoked the specter of the Holocaust, arguing that a regime that openly called for Israel’s destruction couldn’t be trusted with the ultimate weapon.

This doctrine dictated a policy of prevention, not just deterrence. The goal was ensuring Iran could never obtain a nuclear weapon, by any means necessary.

This included diplomatic pressure, covert action, and, if all else failed, the explicit threat of a preemptive military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel identified two primary threats from Iran that had to be neutralized: its nuclear program and its arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

Iran’s Missile Arsenal

In parallel with its nuclear activities, Iran dedicated immense resources to developing the largest and most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East.

This program, which began with technology based on Soviet-era Scud missiles and was later advanced with North Korean assistance, became a cornerstone of Iran’s national security strategy.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and other international bodies have tracked steady improvement in the range, precision, and lethality of Iran’s missiles, from the short-range Fateh family to the medium-range Shahab-3.

For Tehran, the missile program served dual purposes. First, it was the presumed delivery system for a potential future nuclear weapon, a concern frequently cited by U.S. and Israeli officials.

Second, and more immediately, it was a critical tool of asymmetric deterrence. Lacking a modern air force or navy capable of competing with the United States or Israel, Iran relied on its vast missile stockpile to hold enemy cities and military bases at risk.

This compensated for conventional military shortcomings and deterred potential attacks.

Irreconcilable Security Doctrines

The convergence of these two programs—a clandestine nuclear project and a robust missile arsenal—created a dangerous and seemingly irreconcilable clash of security doctrines.

For Israel, its security has long been predicated on maintaining overwhelming regional military superiority and preventing any single adversary from acquiring a weapon that could threaten its existence. A nuclear Iran would shatter that doctrine, leading to its policy of prevention.

For Iran, its security doctrine was forged in the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War, where it suffered devastating chemical weapons attacks with little international recourse. It was also shaped by observing the fates of leaders like Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who were overthrown after abandoning their weapons of mass destruction programs.

This led Iran to a policy of deterrence, where the capability to build a nuclear weapon is seen as the ultimate guarantee against foreign-led regime change.

These two doctrines are mutually exclusive, creating a classic security dilemma. Every step Iran takes to enhance its perceived deterrent is seen by Israel as a step closer to an existential threat. This makes the conflict exceptionally volatile and resistant to diplomatic resolution.

War in the Shadows

As the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program intensified in the 2000s and 2010s, the conflict was primarily waged not on a conventional battlefield, but in the “gray zone”—a space of hostility that falls just short of declared war.

The United States, Israel, and Iran engaged in relentless, multi-front shadow war fought with computer code, economic sanctions, and regional proxies. This approach allowed each side to inflict significant damage while maintaining plausible deniability and avoiding catastrophic costs of direct military clash.

Stuxnet and Cyber Warfare

In June 2010, the shadow war entered a new and alarming dimension with the public discovery of Stuxnet. This wasn’t an ordinary computer virus—it was a highly sophisticated and unprecedented piece of malware, a digital weapon of immense complexity.

Stuxnet was designed with a single, audacious goal: to physically destroy a specific part of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

The worm is widely believed to have been a joint creation of the United States and Israel, though neither country has ever officially acknowledged its role. It was reportedly delivered into the high-security, air-gapped network of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility via an infected USB drive.

Once inside, Stuxnet specifically targeted the Siemens-made industrial control systems that managed the plant’s high-speed gas centrifuges.

The Genius of Subtlety: The genius of the attack lay in its subtlety. Stuxnet caused the centrifuges to spin at irregular and destructive speeds, causing them to degrade and break down at an accelerated rate.

Simultaneously, it fed false telemetry back to the plant’s operators, making it appear as though everything was functioning normally.

By the time it was discovered, Stuxnet had reportedly destroyed nearly one-fifth of Iran’s operational centrifuges, dealing a significant setback to its enrichment program.

The attack was a landmark event in conflict history, marking the first known use of a cyber weapon to cause major, real-world physical damage. It opened a new front in the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict—one that was deniable, difficult to attribute, and incredibly potent.

The Sanctions Weapon

The primary weapon in the American arsenal was economic. Over four decades, the United States built the most comprehensive and punishing sanctions regime in modern history, transforming it from a punitive tool into a primary instrument of coercive foreign policy.

The initial sanctions, imposed by President Carter during the hostage crisis, were “primary sanctions,” which prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing business with Iran.

The critical evolution came with widespread use of “secondary sanctions.” These measures target non-U.S. companies, financial institutions, and even entire countries, forcing them to choose between doing business with Iran or maintaining access to the far more valuable U.S. market and financial system.

Landmark pieces of legislation, often passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, steadily tightened the economic vise on Tehran.

This strategy of “maximum pressure” was designed to deny the Iranian government financial resources needed to fund its nuclear program, ballistic missile development, and network of regional proxies.

Iran’s Proxy War

While the U.S. waged economic warfare, Iran perfected its strategy of proxy warfare. Facing conventionally superior U.S. and Israeli militaries, Iran invested heavily in its “Axis of Resistance”—a network of allied states and non-state militant groups across the Middle East.

This network included its most powerful proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon; Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; various Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria; and the Houthi movement in Yemen.

Through this network, Iran has been able to wage continuous, low-level war against its adversaries. Its proxies have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, launched rockets at Israel, and threatened vital shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

This strategy provided Tehran with forward-defense posture and means of retaliation, all while maintaining plausible deniability that helped avoid direct, state-on-state confrontation.

The result was stable but highly combustible equilibrium—a state of perpetual gray-zone conflict that could, with a single miscalculation, spiral into the all-out war that all sides sought to avoid.

The Nuclear Deal: A Brief Diplomatic Moment

The Logic of Engagement

By the early 2010s, the combination of crippling international sanctions and looming threat of military action had brought the Iranian nuclear crisis to a head. In this tense environment, the Obama administration pursued a dual-track policy of pressure and engagement, ultimately leading to a historic diplomatic breakthrough.

The result was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, finalized in July 2015.

The JCPOA was a landmark multilateral agreement negotiated between Iran and the P5+1—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) plus Germany.

The Core Trade-Off: The core logic of the deal was straightforward trade-off. In exchange for lifting the most severe international sanctions that had devastated its economy, Iran agreed to accept significant, long-term, and verifiable constraints on its nuclear program.

These included drastically reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium, dismantling thousands of centrifuges, redesigning its heavy-water reactor at Arak to prevent production of weapons-grade plutonium, and submitting to the most intrusive international inspections and monitoring regime ever negotiated.

The goal was extending Iran’s “breakout time”—the amount of time it would need to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon—to at least one year, providing the international community ample time to detect and respond to any attempt to build a bomb.

Fierce Opposition

The JCPOA was one of the most fiercely debated foreign policy initiatives in recent American history. The Obama administration and its supporters championed the deal as the only viable peaceful alternative to either a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.

They argued it successfully cut off all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon and put its program under a microscope.

However, opponents in the United States, primarily within the Republican Party, and the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vehemently attacked the agreement as a “historic mistake.”

Their criticisms were pointed and consistent:

“Sunset” Clauses: They argued the deal’s key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities weren’t permanent and would begin to expire after 10 to 15 years, paving a legitimate path for Iran to eventually develop an industrial-scale enrichment program.

Limited Scope: A major flaw, in their view, was that the deal exclusively addressed the nuclear issue. It failed to constrain Iran’s development of ballistic missiles or its support for terrorist groups and destabilizing regional activities.

Financial Windfall: Critics contended that sanctions relief would provide Tehran with a massive financial windfall—billions of dollars in unfrozen assets—that the regime would inevitably use to fund its military and its “malign activities” across the Middle East, including support for proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas.

The U.S. Withdrawal

This intense opposition culminated on May 8, 2018, when President Donald Trump announced he was unilaterally withdrawing the United States from the JCPOA, which he called a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.”

The Trump administration’s official justification was that the deal was fundamentally flawed and built on a lie. Citing intelligence provided by Israel, the administration claimed Iran had concealed a past secret military nuclear program and had entered the agreement in bad faith.

Immediately following withdrawal, the administration re-imposed all U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the deal and launched a campaign of “maximum pressure.”

The stated goal was using crushing economic sanctions to force Iran to capitulate and return to the negotiating table to hammer out a new, much broader, and more restrictive agreement that would address not only the nuclear program but also missiles and regional behavior.

Collapse and Consequences

The consequences of U.S. withdrawal were swift and far-reaching. The decision immediately isolated the United States from its key European allies—the UK, France, and Germany—who had co-negotiated the deal and strongly opposed the American withdrawal.

They tried, but ultimately failed, to salvage the agreement and shield their companies from re-imposed U.S. secondary sanctions. Many foreign policy experts viewed the move as a major strategic blunder that severely damaged U.S. credibility as a reliable negotiating partner.

Iran initially remained in the deal, but as promised economic benefits failed to materialize under the weight of U.S. sanctions, Tehran began its own policy of “maximum resistance.”

Starting in 2019, Iran began to incrementally and publicly breach the nuclear limits set by the JCPOA. It increased its stockpile of enriched uranium, began enriching uranium to higher purities, and installed advanced centrifuges, all while reducing cooperation with IAEA inspectors.

The U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA proved to be the single most significant catalyst for subsequent escalation toward open conflict. The administration’s theory that maximum pressure would lead to Iranian capitulation failed.

Instead, it dismantled the diplomatic architecture designed to prevent a crisis, removed all constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, and alienated the allies needed to maintain a united front.

In doing so, it created the very scenario the JCPOA was designed to avert: an unmonitored, rapidly advancing Iranian nuclear program on a collision course with an Israeli government that viewed such a program as an intolerable threat.

This made future military confrontation almost inevitable.

New Alliances: The Abraham Accords

A Historic Realignment

As the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran intensified, the Trump administration brokered a historic geopolitical realignment in the Middle East. In 2020, the United States facilitated the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations.

Most notably, the agreements included the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with Morocco and Sudan later joining.

Shattering Arab Consensus

The Accords represented a seismic shift in regional politics. For decades, the Arab world had maintained a consensus that normalization with Israel was impossible without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Abraham Accords shattered this consensus, revealing a new set of strategic priorities among key Gulf Arab states.

The driving force behind this realignment was a shared and deepening perception of Iran as the primary threat to regional stability. For the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain, the danger posed by an aggressive and expansionist Iran, coupled with a growing sense that the United States was reducing its security commitments to the region, outweighed the long-standing imperative of pan-Arab solidarity with the Palestinians.

Building an Anti-Iran Coalition

The result was formation of a de facto anti-Iran coalition. The Accords went far beyond diplomatic recognition, fostering deep cooperation in security, intelligence, technology, and economic development.

This new partnership yielded tangible strategic benefits, most dramatically demonstrated in April 2024 when Arab partners, including the UAE, actively participated in shooting down Iranian drones and missiles launched at Israel.

The Accords effectively created a united front against Tehran, emboldening a more confrontational stance and setting the stage for a new, more dangerous phase of the conflict.

From Shadow War to Open Conflict

The Breaking Point

The simmering gray-zone conflict finally boiled over into direct state-on-state warfare in June 2025. The delicate equilibrium of deterrence and deniable attacks collapsed, triggering rapid and violent escalation that drew in the United States.

The Israeli Strike

In the pre-dawn hours of June 13, 2025, Israel launched a massive and unexpected air campaign against Iran. The surprise attack wasn’t a limited strike but a full-scale operation aimed at decapitating Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Israeli warplanes and drones struck over 100 targets, including the primary nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, a nuclear research center in Isfahan, and key military command-and-control centers.

The strikes also successfully assassinated several of Iran’s most senior military leaders, including the head of the armed forces and the commander of the IRGC, as well as top nuclear scientists.

The Israeli government declared the attack was a necessary act of self-defense to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring an atomic weapon.

Iran’s Unprecedented Response

Iran’s response was swift and unprecedented. Abandoning its long-standing strategy of relying solely on proxies, Tehran launched direct retaliatory strikes against Israel.

Over the following days, Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and armed drones at Israeli population centers, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

While Israel’s sophisticated, multi-tiered air defense system intercepted most incoming projectiles, some missiles penetrated the shield, striking residential areas and causing dozens of casualties.

The tit-for-tat exchange escalated, with Israel conducting further strikes on Iranian government buildings and oil refineries, and Iran vowing that its attacks would become “more forceful, severe, precise and destructive.”

U.S. Intervention

For over a week, the United States remained on the sidelines, repositioning military assets in the region and calling for de-escalation while publicly stating it had “nothing to do with the attack.”

However, as the conflict intensified and high-level diplomatic efforts failed, the Trump administration made the momentous decision to intervene directly.

The justification was that Israel, despite its successful strikes, lacked the specific military capability to destroy Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site: the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant, buried deep inside a mountain.

At Israel’s request, President Trump authorized a U.S. military strike. On June 21, 2025, American B-2 stealth bombers flew into Iranian airspace and attacked three key nuclear sites.

The Bunker Buster

To destroy the Fordo facility, the U.S. employed its most powerful conventional weapon: the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or “bunker buster.”

This earth-penetrating bomb, which can only be delivered by the B-2 bomber, was the one weapon in the world capable of reaching and destroying the deeply buried enrichment plant.

The U.S. attack marked a dramatic entry into the war, transforming it from a regional conflict into a direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran.

Global Reactions

The war sent shockwaves across the globe. G7 leaders issued a joint statement calling for de-escalation but reaffirming that “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

European leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron made urgent calls for restraint and a return to negotiations.

The Trump administration defended its intervention as necessary action to eliminate an intolerable threat. President Trump declared he had worked “as a team” with Prime Minister Netanyahu and that the U.S. wouldn’t hesitate to strike again if Iran didn’t make peace.

He framed the intervention as the culmination of a 40-year struggle against a regime that chants “death to America” and vowed he would never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

The Price of Transformation

The 2025 war was the ultimate, violent outcome of the security dilemma created by the collapse of the JCPOA. With diplomacy dead and Iran’s nuclear program advancing unchecked, Israel launched a preventive war that it couldn’t finish on its own.

This ultimately pulled its most powerful ally into the very conflict that decades of sanctions, covert action, and diplomacy had failed to avert.

Historical Lessons

The transformation of the U.S.-Israel-Iran triangle from alliance to adversaries offers profound lessons about the nature of international relationships and the limits of strategic partnerships.

Pragmatic Foundations Are Fragile: The original alliance was built purely on shared strategic interests and common enemies, not on shared values or deep cultural ties. When Iran’s domestic revolution fundamentally changed its identity and interests, the alliance couldn’t survive.

Revolution Changes Everything: The 1979 Iranian Revolution wasn’t just a change of government—it was a complete reorientation of Iran’s identity, ideology, and place in the world. Such profound transformations can instantly reverse decades of carefully built relationships.

The Power of Narrative: The new Iranian regime’s ability to reframe the United States and Israel as “satans” and enemies wasn’t just rhetoric—it became a foundational organizing principle that shaped decades of policy and conflict.

Secondary Effects Matter: The 1953 coup, while successful in the short term, created lasting resentment that revolutionary leaders later exploited. Historical grievances can have very long half-lives in international relations.

The Security Dilemma Trap

The nuclear crisis exemplifies how security dilemmas can become self-fulfilling prophecies:

Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability, motivated by its own security concerns, was seen by Israel as an existential threat requiring prevention by any means necessary.

Israel’s threats and actions to prevent Iranian nuclear capability convinced Iranian leaders that they needed nuclear deterrent capability to prevent foreign-led regime change.

Each side’s efforts to enhance its security made the other side less secure, creating an escalatory spiral that proved extremely difficult to break through diplomacy.

The Limits of Coercion

The failure of “maximum pressure” demonstrates the limits of economic coercion as a foreign policy tool:

Despite inflicting severe economic damage, sanctions couldn’t compel Iran to abandon what its leaders viewed as essential national security interests.

The withdrawal from the JCPOA removed the diplomatic framework that had successfully constrained Iran’s nuclear program, leading to the very outcome it was meant to prevent.

Allies who had invested in diplomatic solutions were alienated, making it harder to maintain international pressure on Iran.

Regional Ripple Effects

The transformation of this triangle reshaped the entire Middle East:

The Abraham Accords represent how shared threat perceptions can override traditional alliance patterns, as Arab states chose cooperation with Israel over solidarity with Palestinians.

Iran’s proxy network strategy allowed it to project power across the region while maintaining plausible deniability, but also meant that any direct conflict would likely become a broader regional war.

The 2025 conflict demonstrates how regional conflicts can quickly escalate to involve global powers, with potentially worldwide economic and security consequences.

Looking Forward

The June 2025 strikes mark not an end but a new phase in this troubled relationship. The fundamental drivers of conflict—Iran’s revolutionary ideology, Israel’s security doctrine, and U.S. global hegemony—remain unchanged.

Whether this crisis leads to a broader regional war, a new diplomatic framework, or a prolonged period of limited conflict will depend on choices made in Washington, Tehran, and Jerusalem in the coming months and years.

What’s certain is that the transformation from alliance to adversaries in this triangle has been one of the most consequential geopolitical developments of the modern era, with effects that continue to reverberate across the globe.

The story of how three nations that once worked together against common enemies became locked in a potentially existential struggle serves as a powerful reminder of how quickly and dramatically international relationships can change—and how difficult they can be to repair once broken.

The Human Cost

Behind the geopolitical maneuvering lies a human cost that’s often overlooked. Ordinary Iranians have suffered under decades of sanctions. Israelis live under constant threat of missile attack. Americans have lost soldiers in proxy conflicts across the Middle East.

The transformation from alliance to adversaries has created suffering for millions of people who had no say in the grand strategic decisions that shape their lives.

The challenge for future leaders will be finding ways to address legitimate security concerns while avoiding the cycles of escalation and retaliation that have characterized this relationship for over four decades.

Whether the 2025 conflict represents the culmination of these tensions or simply another escalatory step in an ongoing confrontation remains to be seen. What’s clear is that the path from allies to enemies, once taken, has proved remarkably difficult to reverse.

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