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The prime minister, Nuri al-Said, fled, disguised as a woman, but was recognized and killed. Qasim vowed to fight imperialism and to formulate a popular republic. This was a major blow to Western powers and their allies in the Middle East. Iraq was considered a major link in the Northern Tier, which the West had set up against the Soviet Union. Iran’s fears seemed to be realized almost immediately. Qasim’s regime initiated several policies that were seen as threatening to Iranian national interests.

Second, rhetoric aside, the 1967 Arab defeat represented a dramatic shift from “liberating Palestine” to accepting the fact that the Jewish state is here to stay and legitimizing Israel as part of the Middle East state-system. In other words, for many Arabs the conflict with Israel has gradually shifted from eliminating it to liberating the Arab territories occupied in the 1967 war. In addition to these regional changes, the shah had grown confident of his economic and military power. The massive oil revenues Iran had accumulated and the huge military capabilities it had built in the early 1970s made the Pahlavi regime more confident and less dependent on Israel than a decade ago.

In other words, he made a distinction between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political movement. Since 1979, however, this distinction has occasionally been blurred. To sum up, despite Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology, the founder of the Islamic Republic adopted a moderate stand toward his country’s Jewish citizens. The Islamic constitution recognizes Jews as a religious minority, allows them a representative in the Majlis, and accepts Jewish laws on burial and divorce. In Tehran, synagogues and Jewish schools flourish and the Jewish hospital is among the city’s most respected.