Cyrus Accords and Israel-Iran Relations

...only those strong enough to defend

themselves are also strong enough to extend a hand

to anyone willing to extend theirs in return.

And the roots of that outstretched hand run deep.

2,500 years deep

into our history,

it was Cyrus,

king of Persia, who allowed the Jewish people to return

from the Babylonian exile to Jerusalem

and to rebuild the temple.

The Book of Ezra opens with his words

that said Cyrus, king of Persia.

He has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem,

a Persian king who brought Jews home.

This was the first covenant between

the Persian people and the Jewish people.

And that covenant is far more alive

than it may seem.

Until 1979,

Iran and Israel were close friends.

Iran was the second Muslim majority country

to recognize the State of Israel.

Tens of thousands of Jews lived in the streets of Tehran.

Direct flight connected Tel Aviv and Tehran.

And when a terrible earthquake struck Persia,

Israel rushed to send doctors, tents and medicine.

Israeli experts helped rebuild her villages,

and Persian farmers learned to work the land on our kibbutzim.

The two peoples built together.

The revolution of the Ayatollahs

tried to erase all of this by force

and branded us the little Satan,

and the United States, the big Satan.

But a history of thousands of years

is not erased by 40 years of hatred.

Beneath the imposed hostility,

the Iranian people remember.

The young men and women raising the Lion and Sun flag

in the streets of Iran, alongside the flag of Israel,

know exactly what future they want.

And they are not the regime,

and the regime is not the people of Iran.

I had the privilege to hosting His Royal Highness,

Crown Prince Cyrus Reza Pahlavi.

And together, we put forward a vision,

the Cyrus Accords,

the widening of the Abrahamic Accord circle of peace

eastward toward a free Iran,

a covenant between Israel and the liberated Iran,

built on mutual respect and sovereignty,

and on a true and shared interest.

My vision includes a new regional framework:

Israel, a free Iran, the Gulf states, and the United States,

working together on water, energy and security.

Turning this ancient crossroads

into a crossroads of global prosperity.

This is not an illusion.

This is a strategy.