While the prospect of normalisation with Saudi Arabia has receded, something arguably more natural has come into view: the prospect of peace between a restored Iran and Israel
January 14, 2026 11:00
There are moments when history briefly reopens doors long thought sealed. Iran may now be approaching one of them.
Across the UK and around the world, Jews have stood unmistakably with the Iranian people as they confront a regime at war with its own citizens. At a rally outside Downing Street on Sunday, pre-revolution Iranian flags were waved alongside Israeli ones – an unspoken reminder that the hostility of the past four decades is an aberration. One Iranian protester put it simply: we will not forget who stood by us.
That solidarity is neither sentimental nor new. It rests on a relationship between Iranians and Jews that predates the Islamic Republic by more than two millennia – going back to Cyrus the Great, who ended the Babylonian captivity and allowed the Jewish people to return and rebuild.
To understand how we arrived here requires looking back at the past two years. The Hamas massacres of October 7 were timed, in no small part, to derail the expansion of the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia. In that narrow sense, the assault succeeded. But it also triggered consequences Tehran did not foresee. Israel moved systematically against the Iranian regime’s axis – crippling Hamas, degrading Hezbollah, and then, over twelve days last June, striking the Islamic Republic itself. The myth of invulnerability was punctured.
It is unlikely that today’s unrest would have erupted without those preceding shocks. And while the prospect of normalisation with Saudi Arabia has receded, something arguably more natural has come into view: the prospect of peace between a restored Iran and Israel. Call them, if one wished, the Cyrus Accords.
Such a step would be momentous not only for Israel and Iran, but for the wider region. A genuine democratic transition in Tehran – one that restores Iranian civilisation rather than replaces one form of tyranny with another – would not merely remove the central sponsor of terror and war from the region and beyond. It could finally give substance to the idea of a “new Middle East” so often invoked, but never quite realised.
For the Jewish people and Iranians alike, it would represent the renewal of a friendship older than most nations – a bend in the arc of history few would have dared to imagine.
None of this diminishes the uncertainty of the present. Thousands of Iranians have already been killed and Washington may yet intervene, as President Trump has repeatedly warned Tehran. US retreat now would come at a cost – not only to Iran’s protesters, but to American deterrence worldwide.
What is beyond doubt is that responsibility does not rest with Washington alone. It took twelve days for the UK, France and Germany to issue a 66-word joint statement on events that may reshape the world. The brevity spoke for itself. So did the cautious tone.
Diplomatic caution has its place. And it is fair to ask whether taking more decisive action by, for example, proscribing the IRGC or freezing regime assets, would make any discernible difference in the events unfolding in Iran. But there are moments so consequential that whatever influence exists, however limited, carries a moral and strategic obligation to be used.
History will record that when Iranians risked everything to reclaim their country, the Jewish people and Israel stood in solidarity with them, understanding that this is not only a moment of danger, but one of rare and profound possibility.
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