http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=62568&mador=1&datee=12/02/99
Thursday, December 2, 1999
Background Door is still shut on Irangate
By Ronen Bergman
After the 1979 Iranian revolution, and especially
after the Iran-Iraq war, Israel sold Iran enormous
quantities of weapons. The Soltam company led the
way in those sales, as Iranian artillery continued,
as in the good old days of the Shah, to fire shells
produced on the company's Yokne'am production line.
The trade was conducted through various liaisons in
Israel and abroad and through the camouflage of
third parties and shipping documents that
identified the weapons as if they had come from
Europe. Iranian merchants whom the Israelis dealt
knew where the weapons were coming from, but no
Iranian security institution knew.
Some of the agents of the revolution indeed
believed that they were able to hold their own
against Iraq through the aid of those very European
countries. Most of the sales remain secret to the
present day, due, among other things, to the
obstinate battle by Yechiel Chorev, head of the
Defense Ministry's unit for ministry security, to
keep them completely under wraps.
Only a small portion of the transactions have
surfaced, two cases in particular: the Irangate
affair that was exposed in a Lebanese newspaper and
later publicized with great fanfare; and the Manbar
affair, over which the security establishment is
still attempting to deny having known that the
equipment from Israeli factories was being turned
over to the ayatollahs in Iran.
At the outset of the Irangate affair, Iran was
suffering greatly from weapon shortages in its war
with Iraq and its arms buyers were combing the
world, calling out to anyone who would answer. The
United States was simultaneously seeking a way to
the heart of the Tehran regime, both in order to
strengthen the moderates within it and, even more
so, to free the American hostages then being held
in Lebanon. Congress, however, had imposed
sanctions on Tehran that banned the sale of
military equipment.
Congress had also banned the sale of arms to the
Nicaraguan contras, but certain members of the
National Security Council and White House thought
that they had found one Israeli stone with which to
kill both birds: Sell Israeli weapons to the
Iranians and transfer the funds to the contras
while also sidling up to Tehran and freeing the
hostages. It looked great on paper.
In 1985, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak
Shamir decided to get involved, but to leave the
Mossad out of the loop by relying on Yaakov Nimrodi
and Al Schwimmer as unofficial liaisons. At the
same time, Foreign Ministry Director-General David
Kimche received authorization from NSC chairman
Robert McFarlane that the actions were approved by
President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State
George Schultz.
The first shipment included 504 TOW antitank
missiles from Israeli stores. The second contained
18 Hawk antiaircraft missiles, but they were later
revealed to be defective. There was bitterness in
Israel over Nimrodi and Schwimmer's handling of the
deal, and the Americans also seem to have been
suspicious of Nimrodi. Ha'aretz revealed secret
documents two years ago proving that U.S.
intelligence had trailed Nimrodi and tapped his
phone. Both Nimrodi and Schwimmer were replaced by
Peres' terrorism adviser, Amiram Nir, but Nimrodi
complained that he was being undermined.
When the affair broke, investigations were
conducted in the United States and Israel, causing
a number of heads to roll. The Israeli commission
found that $2 million in funds was missing from the
deals and, among others, Nimrodi was questioned
over the deals he struck.
Although Nimrodi's name was cleared, the
destination of the missing funds was never
discovered. Nir perished in a mysterious plane
crash over Mexico, and many other questions have
never been answered. A number of businessmen
involved in the affair claim that many important
details in the affair have yet to be revealed.
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