Iranian missiles threatening Gulf governments, US military bases and Israel have become one of the most dangerous weapons in the Middle East. Yet the origins of that missile threat lie in a secret weapons programme funded by Tehran and developed by Israeli scientists during the final years of the Shah.
In one of the Middle East’s most striking historical ironies, the missile confrontation now shaping the region began with a covert Israeli–Iranian partnership.
Less than half a century ago, Iranian officers travelled to Israel to watch the launch of an Israeli missile in the Negev desert. The test was part of a secret joint programme known as Project Flower, an ambitious effort to develop advanced missile systems.
Today Iran and Israel are bitter adversaries. Yet, during the late 1970s they were quietly cooperating on military technology whose legacy still echoes in the region’s security crises. The existence of the programme first surfaced in investigative reporting during the 1980s and has since been confirmed by later historical findings. Subsequent research confirmed that the collaboration was real. According to the RAND study Israel and Iran: A Dangerous Rivalry, “in 1977, Iran and Israel began a joint missile development project known as Project Flower.”
The project formed part of a wider strategic relationship between the two states during the Cold War. Before the fall of the Shah, Israel and Iran maintained extensive economic, intelligence and military contacts. As the RAND study notes, “before the 1979 revolution, Israel and Iran maintained close military, intelligence, and economic ties.”
Historians have long emphasised the depth of that partnership. As Trita Parsi writes in Treacherous Alliance, “For Israel, Iran under the Shah represented its most important strategic partner in the region.”
Project Flower was more than a symbolic gesture. It involved substantial Iranian funding for Israeli research. According to RAND, Tehran “reportedly paid approximately $300 million in cash and another $250 million in oil for the joint program.” That meant oil revenues from the Shah’s Iran were helping finance Israeli missile development.
The arrangement reflected the strategic realities of the 1970s. Israel faced diplomatic isolation and energy pressures from Arab states, while Iran was flush with oil money and eager to modernise its armed forces. Each side offered what the other lacked: Israeli technological expertise and Iranian financial resources. The collaboration illustrates how fluid alliances in the Middle East can be.
Under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran was one of Israel’s most important regional partners. The two governments shared intelligence, traded oil and quietly coordinated against common geopolitical concerns, including Soviet influence and hostile Arab regimes.
The relationship formed part of Israel’s broader strategic effort to cultivate alliances with non-Arab powers in the region. As nuclear historian Avner Cohen writes in Israel and the Bomb, “Iran was Israel’s most important partner in its strategy of alliances with non-Arab states on the periphery of the Middle East.”
The closeness of the relationship has also been highlighted by intelligence historians. As journalist and historian Ronen Bergman writes in Rise and Kill First, “Iran under the Shah was Israel’s closest ally in the Middle East.”
Israel had already begun developing advanced missile systems as part of its strategic deterrent programme, including work linked to the Jericho missile. Iran, meanwhile, was engaged in one of the largest military build-ups in the developing world, financed by the oil boom of the 1970s. Project Flower was designed to merge these ambitions.
Under the plan, Israeli engineers would lead missile development while Iran would finance the programme and eventually host production facilities. Plans included the construction of a missile assembly plant near Sirjan in central Iran and testing facilities elsewhere in the country.
Iranian engineers and technicians were expected to participate in the project, exposing them to the workings of a sophisticated missile development programme. The partnership was short-lived.
In early 1979 the Iranian monarchy collapsed amid mass protests and political upheaval. The Iranian Revolution replaced the monarchy with the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The new regime severed relations with Israel and cancelled the missile project almost immediately.
As the RAND study later concluded, “the Iranian Revolution ended the cooperation between Israel and Iran.” Over the following decades Iran developed one of the largest missile arsenals in the Middle East. Much of that capability emerged during and after the Iran–Iraq war, when Tehran acquired Soviet-designed Scud missiles and later developed its own missile programme with foreign assistance.
Today, Iranian missiles can strike targets across the Middle East, threatening Israel, US military installations and Gulf Arab states. Israel meanwhile has continued developing advanced missile systems and missile defence technologies. The episode reflects a broader pattern in the history of technology: knowledge acquired in one political era often reappears in another.
The story has an echo of Wernher von Braun, the rocket scientist whose expertise developed in Nazi Germany later became central to the American missile and space programmes.
Iranian engineers involved in Project Flower were exposed to sophisticated missile development methods long before Iran built its own arsenal. The revolution ended the partnership, but experience gained during that collaboration may have influenced Iran’s later efforts to develop missile technology.
The Israeli–Iranian alliance also left a lasting intelligence legacy. During the Shah’s rule, Israeli intelligence operated extensively inside Iran and maintained close working relations with the country’s security services, including the Shah’s intelligence organisation, SAVAK. Israeli advisers helped train elements of the service while Israeli intelligence officers developed contacts within Iran’s military, political and technical establishments.
Those years of cooperation gave Israel something no other Western intelligence service possessed: intimate access to Iran’s governing elite and detailed knowledge of the country’s military and security infrastructure. When the revolution ended the alliance, the formal relationship collapsed. But the knowledge, contacts and understanding built during that period did not simply disappear.
Decades later, Israel continues to demonstrate an extraordinary ability to penetrate Iran’s most sensitive institutions. Israeli intelligence — particularly Mossad — has repeatedly shown that it can locate, infiltrate and target figures at the heart of Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.
That capability did not emerge in a vacuum. It grew out of a period when Israel had unparalleled access to Iran’s political and military system — a legacy of the years when the two countries were not enemies but strategic partners. The result is one of the most remarkable reversals in modern Middle Eastern geopolitics.
Less than half a century ago Israeli scientists and Iranian officials were developing missile technology together. Today the missiles themselves are flying in opposite directions.
Shyam Bhatia
Veteran journalist based in London, author of The Quiet Correspondent