COMMENTARY: Why the ayatollahs hate the United States and Israel

In geopolitics, hatred is usually strategic. Yet the Islamic Republic’s obsession with the United States and Israel cannot be explained through strategy, borders or military calculations alone. Iran and Israel share no border. Persians are not Arabs.

Historically, Jewish, Persian and American civilizations often cooperated rather than clashed. The roots of the hostility lie elsewhere — inside the revolutionary ideology forged after 1979, deeply intertwined with a radicalized interpretation of Twelver Shi’ite doctrine.

Before the Islamic Revolution, the United States and Iran maintained full diplomatic relations, along with deep military and economic ties. Iran and Israel likewise conducted quiet but extensive cooperation. Under the shah, Iran recognized Israel de facto, exchanged intelligence, coordinated militarily and conducted significant trade. The Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, jointly constructed to move Iranian oil through Israel to Europe while bypassing the Suez Canal, stands as the clearest symbol of that partnership. In the cold strategic arithmetic of the Cold War Middle East, Iran and Israel once stood on the same side.

Yet, the relationship between the United States and Iran carried a darker undercurrent. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a covert operation — known as Operation Ajax — to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and consolidate the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The SAVAK secret police, established in 1957 with assistance from the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, became one of the most feared security organizations in the Middle East, notorious for torture and the systematic suppression of political opposition. This history gave Iranians legitimate grievances against American interference — grievances that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would later weaponize.

When the shah was overthrown in 1979, President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed shah — a pro-Western autocrat expelled from his own country — to enter the United States for cancer treatment. This act inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iran, as the revolutionaries demanded that the shah be returned to stand trial. For them, offering him sanctuary was a direct insult to their revolution, symbolizing continued American interference in Iranian affairs.

On Nov. 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and seized more than 60 American hostages, holding them for 444 days. The crisis permanently severed diplomatic relations and cemented a mutual hostility from which neither country has fully recovered.

Khomeini did not merely replace a monarchy with another government. He replaced Iran’s entire ideological operating system. The United States and Israel ceased to be foreign states and became the “Great Satan” and “Little Satan” — theological designations, not diplomatic ones.

To understand the depth of this hostility, we must understand revolutionary Twelver Shi’ism. Traditional Twelver doctrine centers on belief in 12 divinely guided imams. The Twelfth Imam — the Hidden Imam, or Mahdi — disappeared in the ninth century and will return during a period of chaos to establish perfect Islamic justice.

For centuries, mainstream Twelver Shi’ism was largely quietist; clerics avoided direct political rule while awaiting his return. Khomeini fundamentally transformed this doctrine through his concept of Velayat-e Faqih — rule by the supreme Islamic jurist — arguing that senior clerics must govern until the Hidden Imam returns.

This was not merely a constitutional innovation. It created a revolutionary ideology fusing religion, state power, anti-Westernism and permanent confrontation. Within this worldview, Israel became far more than another country — it symbolized Western penetration of the Muslim world, secular corruption and the humiliation of Islam. Some regime-affiliated clerics and Revolutionary Guard ideologues went further, incorporating apocalyptic interpretations suggesting that regional conflict could accelerate messianic redemption.

The regime’s hostility toward Israel and the United States also serves concrete political functions. It legitimizes the revolution’s identity — remove these enemies, and the ideological structure begins to collapse. It justifies Iran’s network of proxy militias across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Yemen. And it diverts public attention from chronic domestic failures: inflation, corruption, unemployment and economic stagnation. Revolutionary regimes require permanent enemies.

Ironically, many ordinary Iranians hold different views. Persians remember Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jewish people to return from Babylonian exile more than 2,500 years ago. Iran still contains one of the Middle East’s oldest Jewish communities. Many secular Iranians openly admire Israel’s technological achievements, and those old enough remember the prosperity of the pre-revolutionary era.

The tragedy is that the regime’s ideological obsession has repeatedly harmed Iran. Tehran has spent enormous resources on proxy wars, missiles and nuclear ambitions while its people struggle. History will ultimately show that neither the United States nor Israel was ever truly the ayatollahs’ enemies — only instruments used to distract Iranians from the misery the revolution brought upon them.

Religious fervor does not feed your family.

Haggai Carmon is an Israeli lawyer who represented the United States in Israeli litigation for many years. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.