The Cyrus Accords

On 18 September 2025, Gila Gamliel — Israel's Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology — published an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post titled “The Cyrus Accords: The beginning of a new chapter in Israel-Iran relations.” In it she described a prepared framework for peace between Israel and a future, free Iran.

Gamliel wrote that the initiative “is a joint effort of the State of Israel with those seeking to establish a transitional government that will serve the Iranian people on the day after the Islamic regime falls,” and that it “is led by Crown Prince Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, son of Iran's last shah, together with his professional team.” It is not a treaty in force — it is a document written in advance, for a morning that has not yet come.

Gamliel set out five stated principles for the Accords: mutual respect and sovereignty; pragmatism and mutual benefit; shared historical heritage; a regional vision; and a civic, people-first focus rather than a military one.

Nearly a year later, on 10 July 2026, Gamliel announced that she and Pahlavi's team had finished preparing the document and that it was “ready for signing” — expressing hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu would sign it once the Islamic Republic falls. The Accords remain a prepared proposal, contingent on a change of regime in Tehran; they are not signed.

The name is not decoration. In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and let the exiled Jews return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple — the first act of its kind in recorded history. The Cyrus Cylinder in the British Museum records his policy of return; the Book of Ezra opens with his decree: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia… he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:2).

This is why the framework is one of reciprocity, not rescue. Iran is not a charity case being brought into someone else's club; it is the nation whose king performed the original liberation. When Reza Pahlavi prayed at the Western Wall in April 2023, he made the debt explicit: “2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great liberated the Jewish people from captivity and helped them rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem,” and he prayed “for the day when the good people of Iran and Israel can renew our historic friendship.”

The debt runs forward, too. A free Iran faces a collapsing water system; Israel holds the deepest desalination and wastewater expertise on earth. Neither is a savior — each has something the other needs. That is the shape of an accord between equals.