Arab-Israeli peace the best way to stop Iran’s strategy of destabilisation

Iran is not building its nuclear capabilities to destroy Israel but to gain influence and prestige in a hostile region, writes Shlomo Ben-Ami

THE spectre of a nuclear Iran haunts Arabs and Israelis alike, but it is the US and Israel that are the driving force behind efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The US-Iran-Israel triangle is where the clue to the problem and its possible solution lie.

Though Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1979 disrupted Israel’s old alliance with Iran, the two countries continued to conduct business with America’s blessing. The Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, through which Israel supplied arms to the Islamic Republic in its war against Iraq is a case in point. Israel and Iran, two non-Arab powers in a hostile Arab environment, shared fundamental interests that the Islamic revolution could not change.