Interview with Trita Parsi about his book Treacherous Alliance. The secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. in which he shows that ‘in order for Israel to take center stage in the new Middle East, Iran would have to remain on the political fringe of the region and continue to be denied the role to which it believed it was entitled.’ According to professor Parsi: ‘The conflict between Iran and Israel wasn’t sparked by an ideological difference, nor is it ideological fervor that keeps it alive today.’ As the former Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs, Shlomo Ben-Ami, stated in 1997: ‘For everybody it was convenient that Iran becomes a major issue for the West because in that way we sort of submerged into a wider issue and relegated to a secondary status our problem with the Palestinians.\'