Iran -Turkey Relations and Israel's Political-Security Strategies

This paper examines impacts of close relations between Iran and Turkey on the Israeli political-security strategies in Middle East. The main argument of the author is that Iran and Turkey as the two regional actors have different roles and degrees of influence, but are complement of each other, and after the September 11 events their levels of power and influence in the Middle East have increased. The closeness of these two actors creates a powerful political-security and economic bloc in the Middle East, which challenges political-security strategies in the region. At the present time, Middle East witnesses a kind of ideological and strategic vacuum due to US inability to control the regional crisis. In this context, regional coalition between Iran and Turkey is rapidly replacing this vacuum. Since promoting and closeness of Turkey and Iran relations challenge Israel's political-security and ideological status in the Middle East, this regime will use all of its power to create a gap in this coalition.