In July 1977, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, sent Lieutenant General Hassan Toufanian, his Deputy Minister of War and Armaments, to Israel to hold secret talks with the newly formed Likud government of Menachem Begin. In April that year, the Shah had signed six ‘oil for arms’ contracts with Shimon Peres, the Defence Minister in the previous Labor government. One of the contracts, code named ‘Flower’, sought Israel to modify its advanced surface-to-surface missiles and sell them to Iran. Gen. Toufanian’s mission was to ensure that the change of government in Israel would not affect the deal. He met Major General Ezer Weizman, Defence Minister in the Begin government, and both of them agreed to build a military co-production line — Israel was to provide the technical know-how and Iran the finances and test sites. As part of it, Israel promised to supply Iran ballistic surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700 kilometres that could carry a nuclear warhead, writes journalist Ronen Bergman in his book, The Secret War with Iran.
A shift in West Asia
Counterfactually speaking, had the Islamic Revolution not taken place, Iran would have had Israel-supplied nuclear missiles in the 1980s that could strike deep inside the Sunni kingdoms across the Persian Gulf. But the 1979 revolution that brought down the Shah’s monarchy and turned the country into a theocratic republic radically altered not just Iran but the whole region as well. West Asia would never be the same again. The revolution moved Iran, one of the natural powers in the region in terms of resources, geography and population, from an American ally to its top enemy. For the Sunni Gulf monarchies, a Shia theocratic republic across the Gulf waters not only posed geopolitical challenges but also existential and ideological threats. For Israel, the region’s only nuclear power, its most prominent rival was just born. But despite their shared concerns, these three pillars could not come together immediately as there were pre-existing contradictions between Israel and the Arab world. Four decades later, as Iran’s regional profile keeps rising despite American sanctions, Israel and the Arab world, under the aegis of the United States, are coming together to counter their common foe. If Israel was ready to supply nuclear missiles to Tehran in the 1970s, its primary foreign policy objective today is to stop Iran from getting nuclear capability.
