The Gaza War has led to another debate about what motivates Iran’s ruling elite. Washington has proffered primarily one realist theme: The mullahs wanted to disrupt the diplomacy aimed at Israeli-Saudi normalization, so they helped Hamas unleash a war to awaken the Arab street. Confronted with popular anger, the Arab potentates, they thought, would retreat.
But this ignores a fundamental motivation of Iran’s theocracy: anti-Semitism. At least three generations of radical Iranian clerics have viewed Israel as illegitimate, usurping sacred Islamic lands in the name of a pernicious ideology advanced by history’s most devilish and stubborn people. Using the language of French Marxism, they call Israel a Western “colonial-settler state,” and they believe Jews guide American imperialism in the Middle East. In this struggle between good and evil, Muslims have a religious obligation to resist Israel and global Jewry.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.