In a tragic historical twist, Israel and Iran have gone from millennia of fraternity to a fratricidal war. Part 1 of this essay explored their current conflict; Part 2 traces the origins of the rupture.
By Chudi Okoye
He was a gentle and Gentile king, a conqueror and yet pragmatic ruler upon whom ancient Jews fastened their fervent hope. Though he didn’t worship their God YHWH, he was venerated in their Holy Scripture, lauded alike by their prophets and political leaders.
Over a century earlier the great prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, an astute political observer who watched as powerful Assyria crushed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, proclaimed the conqueror an instrument of God’s wrath against disobedient Israelites, his words thundering in Isaiah 10:5–6: “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury! Against a godless nation I send him…” At the time, the Assyrian empire was beginning a westward expansion (ancient Assyria overlapped the modern territories of northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey, and eastern Syria), threatening Israel which controlled strategic Mediterranean ports and was thus in constant tension with the Near Eastern powers seeking coastal access.
Disciples in Isaiah ben Amoz’s prophetic tradition, writing about two centuries later in the second part of the Book of Isaiah (chapters 40-55, known as Deutero-Isaiah), picked up on a different geopolitical dynamic. The setting was 539 BC, nearly five decades after 586 BC when the Judaeans were sacked by the Neo-Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed the First Temple (built by Solomon) and carried them into exile. By now, Nebuchadnezzar had been dead for over 20 years and Nabonidus, his fourth successor and a weak ruler without royal lineage, was on the throne. A new regional power, Persia (modern Iran), had arisen. Led by a canny warrior king, Cyrus, it had toppled several empires – Media, Lydia – and had wobbly Babylonia firmly in its sights.
In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great marched into Babylon and deposed its reigning king who hardly put up a fight. He proceeded to free the varied peoples in Babylonian captivity, including the Judaeans. Writing either prophetically before this epochal event, or retrojecting politically after the fact (scholars still debate the timing), the authors of Deutero-Isaiah proclaimed Cyrus the “anointed one of God” or “Messiah,” the one chosen by God to liberate Judah from Babylonian bondage – the greatest tragedy in Jewish history, barring the Holocaust. It is worth quoting what the Jewish scribes said of this Iranian ancestor who worshipped a different deity:
“Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand he has grasped to subdue nations before him: ‘I will go before you and level the mountains; I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. I will gird you, though you have not known me, that men may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that I am the Lord, and there is no other.’” (Isaiah 45:1-6; cf. Psalms 107:16).
Cyrus the Great remains the only non-Jew to be honored as “Messiah” in the Hebrew Bible – a title the Jews withhold to this day from Jesus, the man from their midst widely acknowledged as such by Christians and even Muslims. The Iranian ancestor is celebrated by the Jews not only because he freed them from bondage and facilitated their return from exile. He also issued edicts which gave them religious freedom (see Ezra 1:1–4; 2 Chronicles 36:22–23, and also the Persian document, Cyrus Cylinder), and even bankrolled the rebuilding of their Temple (see Ezra 6:3–5; cf. Isaiah 44:28; 45:13,). He established a legacy of tolerance and patronage picked up by his successors, including Darius the Great who completed the construction of the Second Temple in 516 BC, and Artaxerxes I who empowered Ezra and Nehemiah to restore Jewish religious and civic life. Not only is Cyrus exalted in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible; he is also mentioned in the Talmud, the rabbinic interpretation of Jewish foundational text where he is praised as a righteous Gentile king who acted justly among the nations.
There’s not a non-Persian patron of the Jews in succeeding centuries who comes close to Cyrus the Great’s generosity or matches the legacy he left behind. Not Alexander the Great, who merely exempted Jews from taxation. Not his successors, the Ptolemies and Seleucids, who oscillated between tolerance and repression, often interfering in Jewish religious affairs (the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, persecuted the Jews and desecrated the Temple, sparking the Maccabean revolt in 167 BC). Not even Rome’s Herod, the client king of Judea, whose grandiose Temple renovations could not conceal his role as imperial puppet. Only perhaps Emperor Constantine’s patronage of Christianity over eight centuries later, and America’s ardent support of Israel in modern times (often seemingly against its own interests), could approximate Cyrus’s enduring impact. Even so, Cyrus’s legacy of Jewish restoration reverberated far beyond his reign, setting in motion millennia of amity between Persians and Jews, making the current enmity between Iran and Israel – and the calamity it portends – all the more tragic and ironic.
A Benign Legacy
The era of Achaemenid restoration under Cyrus the Great, Darius I, and Artaxerxes I laid a durable foundation for Jewish life within the Persian realm. Far from being an isolated golden age, its legacy of religious freedom, political autonomy, and financial support inaugurated a post-exilic order and the Second Temple era, defining Jewish-Persian relations for over two millennia. Jewish communities in Persia (later Iran) often fared better than their diaspora counterparts, flourishing while others faced persecution.
After the Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 330 BC, Jewish communities survived the turmoil of Hellenistic rule and later thrived under successive Iranian dynasties. They enjoyed considerable autonomy under the indigenous Parthian dynasty (247 BC–224 AD), with a recognized communal authority. The Parthians were generally tolerant, and under their rule Jewish scholarship flourished, laying the foundations for the Babylonian Talmud.
Under the Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD), the last pre-Islamic indigenous dynasty, Jewish populations expanded across Persian cities like Hamadan, Isfahan, and Susa. Zoroastrianism was made state religion, causing tensions and occasional Jewish persecution. Yet Jewish religious and intellectual life thrived, with the Babylonian Talmud completed and canonized during this period: another Jewish milestone under Persian rule, after Babylonian liberation and the Second Temple. Persian Jewry so flourished – in contrast to Roman Byzantine where Christianity was rising – that in 614 AD when Persians briefly captured Byzantine Jerusalem, local Jews aided them, hoping for liberation.
The Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century introduced Islam as the dominant religion, reshaping the socio-political order through what would become the longest governing tradition in Iranian history. Seen as “People of the Book” (community with revealed scripture), Jews were protected but designated second-class citizens under Islamic law. Still, they retained communal autonomy and persisted as part of Persian society through successive Islamic dynasties – Umayyads, Abbasids, Buyids, Safavids, Qajars – contributing in fields like medicine, commerce, and crafts. Persian Jews even thrived under Mongol rule (1256–1353), which otherwise devastated Islamic civilization and ended the Abbasid Golden Age. Later, Shi’a consolidation under the Safavids (1501–1736) introduced stricter religious controls and occasional forced conversions, foreshadowing the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet most disruptions were localized or temporary, and many forced converts quietly returned to Judaism. In cities like Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran, Persian-Jewish culture endured, shaped by resilience and adaptation.
Pahlavi and Discontent
Jewish life in Persia thrived across centuries under indigenous dynasties, and did as well, despite challenges, under Islamic rule. This stood in contrast to the expulsions and pogroms that plagued Jewish communities in Christian Europe. Through its many dynastic changes and shifting religious tides, Persia remained a safe Jewish home, despite occasional challenges, becoming even more propitious in the 20th century under the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979), during which Persia – long so designated internally – was officially renamed Iran.
Although the Pahlavis ruled as monarchs, they inherited a constitutional framework established during the 1905–1911 Constitutional Revolution, which introduced a parliament and the office of Prime Minister, thus curbing absolutist power. This system produced an uneasy balance between royal authority and popular sovereignty that would later be sorely tested.
The dynasty’s founder, Reza Shah, was a secular modernizer who repressed clerical influence and pursued aggressive nation-building. But in 1941, amid World War II and Allied fears of his Nazi sympathies, he was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah. The younger Shah inherited a more volatile domestic environment, where nationalist sentiment – especially over Iran’s oil resources – was rapidly growing. That movement culminated in the rise of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who in 1951 nationalized the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, triggering a geopolitical crisis.
In 1953, Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by British and American intelligence. During the unrest that followed, the Shah briefly fled the country, but was soon reinstated with expanded powers. While this secured Western oil interests, it also deepened nationalist resentment against foreign meddling that in turn emboldened authoritarian rule. Though the Shah promoted modernization and was allied with the West, beneath the surface, tensions simmered – between secular elites and religious traditionalists, between economic development and political repression.
Amid this turbulence, the Jewish community in Iran found room to flourish. The Pahlavis promoted education and integration, and under their rule Jews increasingly entered universities, expanded into the modern professions, and in some cases rose to positions of national influence. By mid-century, the Iranian Jewish population – over 80,000 strong – was among the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. Synagogues thrived, Hebrew education was tolerated, and Zionist sympathies, though quiet, weren’t suppressed. When Israel was established in 1948, Iran under the Shah maintained informal ties, and in 1960 became the second Muslim-majority country to offer Israel a de facto recognition.
This was, in many ways, the final flowering of a relationship more than two millennia old, rooted in Cyrus the Great’s sixth-century BC edict freeing the Jews from Babylonian exile and enabling their return to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. From that ancient restoration to the modern expansions under Pahlavi rule in the 20th century, Persian-Jewish coexistence had endured – tested, stretched, but never broken.
Yet under the surface, a very different force was gathering. The Shah’s unbridled embrace of Westernization, his clampdown on dissent, and the perceived erosion of Islamic values gradually fused into a potent ideological movement. Clerics, nationalists, and leftists – unlikely allies – began to coalesce around a growing opposition. By the late 1970s, that current would surge into a revolution, sweeping away the Pahlavi order, severing Iran’s deep ties to Israel, and inaugurating a new era of estrangement – religious, political, and profoundly symbolic. The long arc of Persian-Jewish amity was about to be broken, with fraternity turned fratricide.
Revolution and Rupture
The bond finally broke in February 1979, after a year-long revolutionary fervor that began in January 1978. The Islamic Revolution, fueled by popular discontent, economic strain, and outrage at Western domination, swept away the Shah and installed a theocratic regime under Ayatollah Khomeini. I was a schoolboy then, but I remember it clearly, with the Ayatollah’s posters everywhere in Nigeria, especially in the North. The revolution was popular with Islamic revivalists as well as anti-imperialist forces in the country. It unfolded in the final stretch of a ‘radical’ Murtala-Obasanjo military regime that had opposed apartheid South Africa, supported nationalist movements across Africa, and was preparing a return to civilian rule.
In a swift turn, Iran’s posture toward Israel hardened into open hostility. Diplomatic ties severed and the Jewish state was recast, with America, as the chief antagonist to the new Islamic republic. Though Jews were not formally expelled and a small community remains, over 70,000 fled, many fearing violence and property dispossession. A relationship consecrated by Cyrus’s ancient decree was undone by a revolution that cast Persians and Jews into mutual estrangement.
Now, nearly half a century later, that estrangement has curdled into kinetic confrontation, with Israel’s June 13 offensive against Iran, which I discussed in Part 1 of this essay. As Israel and Iran trade attacks and threats, their enmity deepens into something nearly unrecognizable from the ancient fraternity they once shared. In announcing the Israeli attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to reassure Iranians that Israel’s war is not with them but with their regime. “I believe that the day of your liberation is near,” he said, envisioning the revival of “great friendship between our two ancient peoples.”
It is a noble hope; yet a deeply improbable one. Even if Iran’s regime were to fall, the scars left by wars, assassinations, cyber-sabotage, and escalating brinkmanship will not heal quickly. Resentment will fester, fueled further by Israel’s hardline posture toward the Palestinians and its wider regional assertiveness. And if the U.S., under pressure from right-wing hawks, enters the fray, the entire region could tip into convulsive destabilization.
This is not the road to a renewed friendship. It is the coda to a historical amity inaugurated by Cyrus, now bent into bitter enmity, one that portends unimaginable calamity.
