The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded) by Avi Shlaim

Author:Avi Shlaim [Shlaim, Avi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Covert Dealings with Iran

Israel was distracted from the single-minded pursuit of the Jordanian option both by the change at the top and by the Irangate scandal. In November 1986, a couple of weeks after Yitzhak Shamir had become prime minister, the American media carried a series of startling stories about the covert supplies of arms to the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Israel was said to have taken the initiative in the spring of 1985 in secretly selling American-made weapons to Iran and in subsequently involving America in the sordid swap of arms for hostages. George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger had categorically rejected the idea of trading arms for hostages when it was first mooted. They also rejected the spurious strategic guise in which this idea was dressed up—namely, that by supplying modest amounts of arms, America would help the moderates prevail against the radicals in the Khomeini regime and then win back Iran for the West.

The Israelis, it was revealed, conspired with officials in the CIA and the National Security Council (NSC) despite the opposition of Shultz and Weinberger. Robert McFarlane, Reagan’s national security adviser, and Oliver North, an NSC staff aide, secretly delivered arms to Iran and used the proceeds to fund one of the president’s pet projects, aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, which Congress had prohibited. The upshot was to make the Reagan administration a party, if a slightly muddled one, to this transaction and to give Israel political cover for its ongoing arms shipments to Iran. Israel was immediately thrown on the defensive by the exposure of its trafficking in arms, covert support for the most anti-Western country in the Middle East, and manipulation of the American government. Israel chose not to deny specific allegations but to concentrate on damage limitation with the administration, Congress, and the public.

The revelation of covert Israeli support for Iran came as a great surprise because the Islamic Republic of Iran was the most extreme ideological opponent of the Jewish state. There was more than one reason for this support. In the first place, Israel had an interest in maintaining at least a subterranean relationship with Iran after the Islamic revolution in order to help Iranian Jews. But there were also bigger geostrategic considerations. The Iran-Iraq war had been going on since 1980. Ideally, the Israelis would have liked both sides to lose this war. The second-best scenario was for Iran and Iraq to demolish one another in a long, drawn-out war of attrition. The supply of arms to Iran, which had been under a strict American embargo since the revolution, was one way of fueling the war and sustaining the stalemate. As long as Iraq remained bogged down in this conflict, it could not join forces with Syria or Jordan to form an eastern front against Israel. Israel’s policy in the Persian Gulf, however, was at odds with its policy in the Middle East. In the Middle East, Israel was in tacit collaboration with Jordan and in open conflict with Syria.

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