In the early days of 1979, Israeli diplomats in Tehran watched as crowds gathered outside of their embassy gates. For decades, they had lived quietly in the Iranian capital, part of a remarkably durable (albeit fraught) partnership between the two countries. Israeli engineers had helped develop irrigation systems across the Iranian countryside; Iranian oil flowed through European pipelines to European markets; intelligence officers from both states shared information about their common enemies.

But, as the Iranian Revolution gathered momentum, supporters of the returning cleric Ruhollah Khomeini seized the Israeli embassy and handed the building to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Diplomatic relations were severed almost overnight. Yasser Arafat was the first foreign leader to visit Iran after the revolution.

Nearly half a century later, the hostility between Iran and Israel is often treated as an immutable feature of Middle Eastern politics – but these two countries were not always enemies.

For nearly three decades before the revolution, Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi maintained a discreet partnership with Israel. Although Tehran avoided recognising Israel to preserve its standing in the Muslim world, there was still significant cooperation between the two states.

In the years following the Arab oil embargoes of the 1960s and 1970s, Iran supplied a significant portion of Israel’s oil. Tankers carried Iranian crude to the Red Sea port of........

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