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1811111•11111111
Friday, December 5, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
(
Fall Guy
Continued from page 24
investigators, who now claim
that Jerusalem's covert aid to
the Contras is, in fact, part of
a deep and longstanding ar-
rangement with the CIA to
provide aid for the guerillas.
At the same time, Jeru-
salem appears to be danger-
ously vulnerable on the two
other central questions.
There are persistent reports
emanating from Israel itself
that the initiative for the
Iranian deal did, in fact, come
from Jerusalem and that
Israel may indeed have been
involved in unauthorized
arms shipments to Iran over
a long period of time.
Reports in the Israeli media
describe a clandestine arms
connection between Israel
and Khomeini's Iran dating
back to 1979 — the year after
the Islamic revolution top-
pled the shah and propelled
the ayatollah to power — and
continuing, with some inter-
ruptions, to the latest affair
involving the United States.
reported, then sold the
package to Washington with
the additional sweetener that
the United States could use
the deal as a lever to win the
.freedom of American host-
ages being held by Iran's
Lebanese surrogates, the
fundamentalist Hizbollah
movement.
Senior Israeli officials
describe three major factors
which contributed to Israel's
argument in support of arms
shipments to Iran in 1985:
• Intelligence reports at the
time suggested that the tide
in the Gulf War was turning
in Iraq's favour, and in order
to insure a continuation of the
stalemate, it was necessary to
prop up the Iranian war
effort.
• Israel wanted to be seen to
be a useful and valuable ally
to the United States by ad-
vancing American interests
in the Middle East and,
perhaps, by laying the foun-
dations for a reconciliation
between Washington and a
post-Khomeini Iran.
• By making itself useful to
'Ibheran at the same time,
Israel hoped to buy protec-
tion for the estimated 50,000
Jews in Iran who are reported
to have been subjected to
persecution by the Islamic
fundamentalist authorities.
It is understood that the
Israeli political triumvirate
will face charges from both
Washington and from its own
Knesset critics of having cap-
itulated to a virtual fait ac-
compli engineered by the
Israeli arms industries, arms
merchants and certain ele-
ments within the Israeli intel-
ligence community.
Specifically, critics are ex-
pected to charge that only
after details of the deal were
completed between the Israeli
sellers and the Iranian buyers
26
C
NEWS
was approval sought—and
obtained
—from the political echelon in
Jerusalem. And only then
were the Americans drawn in-
to the picture.
The Israeli leaders will be
further criticized for having .
recklessly translated a deal
that essentially involved pro-
fit and expediency into a mat-
ter of high political principle.
The Iranian arms affair has
also provoked considerable
controversy among Israeli
politicians who are peeved at.
having learned of the deal
through reports in the foreign
media.
Even those who might have
been expected to lend whole-
hearted support to the arms
deal are troubled by the
almost total concentration of
power in the hands of Shamir,
Peres and Rabin and the cir-
cumvention of Israel's estab-
lished decision-making
processes.
There is conjecture that
Israel. took full advantage of
Washington's limited author-
ization, exploiting its role as
middleman in the deal and
seizing on Iran's desperate
need to acquire United States
war materiel.
"It will be very difficult for
Israeli leaders to explain to
the United States investi-
gators that, having seen a
crack in the door, they went
ahead and kicked it wide
open," noted one political
observer in Jerusalem.
According to other Israeli
reports, some from senior and
highly reliable sources, the
Iranian arms deal was indeed
initiated by Jerusalem after
being hatched by "freelance"
Israeli arms merchants and
Iranian arms buyers operat-
ing in Europe.
Also said to be involved is
the ubiquitous multi-billion-
aire Saudi arms dealer, Ad-
nan Khashoggi, who has
close links with both Ya'acov
Nimrodi, a London-based
Israeli arms dealer and
former official in the Israeli
embassy in Teheran, and with
Al Schwimmer, a former head
of the Israel Aircraft In-
dustries who close to Foreign
Minister Peres.
The Iranian dealers, through
their Israeli business part-
, ners, are said to have con-
vinced top Israeli officials
that it was in the best in-
terests of Jerusalem and
Washington to cultivate the
"moderate" Speaker of the
Iranian Parliament, Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The most effective means
of achieving such a goal, they
suggested, was to enhance his
position in the developing
struggle for succession by
making him appear to be the
source of a regular supply of
sorely needed United States
Continued on. Page 28