This has given Iran an unprecedented level of popularity and credibility in the Islamic world.
How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
> Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, brought about a new worldview that predominantly championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.
> This meant that Israel became known in Iran as the “Little Satan” to the “Great Satan” that is the US.
> “To overcome both the Arab-Persian divide and the Sunni-Shia divide, Iran adopted a much more aggressive position on the Palestinian issue to brandish its leadership credentials in the Islamic world and to put Arab regimes allied with the United States on the defensive,” he said.
> The two are alleged to be behind a long series of attacks on each other’s interests within and outside their soils, which they publicly deny. This has become known as a “shadow war” that has increasingly spilt out into the open as hostilities grew.
> Tehran opposes US hegemony in the Middle East while Israel has consistently pushed back against any efforts in Washington to bring American troops home from the region. Iran-linked groups have regularly attacked US bases in Iraq and Syria.
> It’s a “rivalry for dominance and power in the region, the two states have been embroiled in a low-level war for more than a decade,” said Parsi.
They did. First the UAR and Egypt as the UAR dissolved, later, after Egypt-Israel peace, Iraq took up a role. Iran started backing groups that were more extreme Islamists (though still Sunni) that opposed (and often directly fought) the main anti-Israel Palestinian groups, which ended up themselves as the main fighting groups as the peace process took the PLO off the table as a group actively fighting against Israel, and took up an even bigger role when the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq took Iraq off the table entirely, creating both a regional power vacuum and removing the main issue focusing Iran's attention away from Israel.