As proxy wars between Iran and a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia have escalated in the past decade, journalists and commentators have talked of “ancient” Arab-Persian animosities and inevitable Sunni-Shi’i conflict. This paper examines the alliance forged between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in the 1970s to suggest an alternative and more politically contingent reading of Iran’s recent relations with Arab states and societies. Drawing on memoirs by former Iranian and Egyptian officials, Iranian and Egyptian newspapers, and US and British diplomatic reporting, this paper highlights the fundamentally anti-leftist and anti-Soviet character of this brief Egyptian-Iranian partnership. As such, it points to the role of competing revolutionary and counter-revolutionary visions of the post-colonial state in the shifting relations of Iran and Arab regimes. In the 1960s, the Shah viewed Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser as a vehicle for Soviet influence and social revolution in the Middle East, while Egypt’s state media condemned the Shah as an imperialist lackey. Relations between the two countries improved rapidly after Nasser’s death in 1970. Egypt’s new President Anwar Sadat shared with the Shah a fear that internal opposition movements drew strength from the backing of the Soviet Union, the USSR’s Arab partners, and the transnational Arab left. The two leaders forged an alliance around neutralizing these forces. This paper argues that the Iran-Egypt partnership of the 1970s facilitated dramatic improvements in Iran’s relations with a number of Arab states. Sadat viewed Iran as a counter-revolutionary enforcer and undertook diplomatic campaigns to convince Arab leaders to accept Iranian intervention outside of its borders. Sadat facilitated the Shah’s rapprochement with Iraq, culminating in the 1975 Algiers Accord, and pushed Iran and Saudi Arabia to overcome their divergent interests. The Shah-Sadat alliance also operated at a global level. As revealed in newly declassified US and British documents, the two leaders coordinated support for anti-communist groups across Africa, including in Ethiopia, Somali, Zaire, and Rhodesia, and used their partnership to gain greater influence and agency vis-à-vis both the US and the Soviet Union. The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 rejected the Shah’s counter-revolutionary role in the Middle East. The success of Sadat and the Shah in making Imperial Iran a pillar of a status-quo regional order provides needed perspective on why certain Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have demonstrated implacable hostility toward the Islamic Republic of Iran from its inception.