Israel's Iran Allies of Convenience

If politics makes strange bedfellows, wars make even stranger ones. That has always been true for all nations and is no less the case for the state of Israel in our own day. Beset by a world of Arab and Islamic foes, it has taken its allies wherever it can find them. A generation ago that meant a cozy if embarrassing relationship with apartheid-era South Africa. Those critics of the Jewish state who wish to make much of this should remember Nelson Mandela was happy to embrace the support of the Soviet Union and totalitarian Cuba. Today, with an Islamist regime in Iran threatening not just the security of Israel but the existence of the nation via a nuclear weapons program the world has been powerless to stop, Israel has reportedly found another set of unsavory allies: the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (also known by their Farsi acronym MEK), a dissident group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.