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PROGRAMS FOR MENTALLY IMPAIRED 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