Israeli Connection

Since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, the Israelis have tried to cultivate relations with non-Arab nations in the Middle East, such as Turkey and Iran. While the Shah was in power, Israel openly supplied arms to the Iranian military. But Israeli intelligence also cultivated ties with Iranian army officials after the 1979 revolution. In order to keep the relationship strong, then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin shipped weapons and ammunition to Tehran in early 1980.

The pipeline was evidently closed after Americans were seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1980 but resumed once the captives were released. When George Shultz became Secretary of State in 1982, he insisted that Israel comply with the official ban on the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran. Meanwhile, some of Israel's key contacts in Iran were executed.

In early 1985 Adnan Khashoggi, a wealthy Saudi businessman, entered the picture. Khashoggi fostered ties to two Israeli arms merchants: Yaacov Nimrodi, a former army colonel and longtime Israeli military attache in Tehran during the Shah's reign; and Al Schwimmer, the founding president of Israel Aircraft Industries and a close friend of then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He brought them together with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who was close to Iran's Prime Minister. According to the New York Times, the four met in London, where Ghorbanifar proposed that the Israelis ship TOW antitank missiles and Hawk antiaircraft missiles to Iran as a sign of good faith. They also discussed the idea of trading weapons for hostages.

Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, the Washington Post * reported last week, met in July 1985 with David Kimche, then director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry. Kimche informed him that Iran was prepared to improve relations with the U.S. and help win the release of American hostages in Lebanon on one condition: if the Reagan Administration provided Iran with a "good faith" shipment of weapons. In September McFarlane told Kimche that Reagan opposed any arms-for-hostages deal, but some U.S. officials assert the NSC chief did not object explicitly to Israel's supplying Iran on its own. Israel delivered a planeload of arms to Iran that month; just days later, Hostage Benjamin Weir was released.

Early in 1986, according to the Post, after McFarlane left the Administration, he and NSC Staffer Oliver North flew to London to meet Kimche. They were joined by Nimrodi and Ghorbanifar. The London meeting purportedly ended in a stalemate after the Americans demanded the hostages be released before any more arms were shipped to Iran. Nevertheless, last spring NSC's new chief, John Poindexter, instructed McFarlane and North to fly first to Israel, where they boarded a plane carrying U.S. weapons, and then to Iran.

For Israel, an Iraqi victory in the six-year-old war would be the worst possible outcome; Iraq has supplied frontline troops to three Arab-Israeli wars and provided shelter and support for terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas. A continued stalemate would be best of all: it simultaneously weakens the frontline Arab states, deflects Arab attention from Israel and checks the expansion of Iranian-inspired Islamic fanaticism. But an outright Iranian victory could prove a mixed blessing. Moreover, just as the Tehran arms deal has backfired on the Reagan Administration, it might also turn out to be detrimental to Israel, for some of the weapons could be channeled to Shi'ite Muslim soldiers fighting Israeli troops in Lebanon.